Row erupts in UK over plans to summon worshippers from mosque

LONDON: A major row has erupted in Britain over a plan by Muslims of East Oxford to summon believers for prayers over a loudspeaker from a mosque, with local residents terming the practice an attempt to turn the area into a 'Muslim ghetto'.
 
Local residents, who met at a council meeting over the issue, attacked the plan for a two-minute long call to prayer to be issued three times a day, saying that it could drown out the traditional sound of church bells.
 
But a spokesman for the Central Mosque said that Muslim's also have the right to summon worshippers.
 
"The proposal to issue a prayer call is very un-neighbourly, especially in a crowded urban space such as Oxford," Dr Mark Huckster, who lives in Stanton Road and works at East Oxford, told the Oxford Mail.
 
Dr Huckster argued that if an evangelical Christian preacher proposed issuing sermons three times a day at full volume there would be an outcry.
 
"There could be a sense of ghettoisation of East Oxford. Cowley Road would have a Muslim flavour and could become a Muslim ghetto which is contrary to what we want in a multicultural society," he observed.
 
Allan Chapman, who lives in East Oxford, said, "I do not want preaching at. It is not the tradition of this country or the tradition I subscribe to."
 
David Hutcheson, of East Avenue, said: "I'm very happy for people to practice their own religion but very unhappy about the thought of having a loudspeaker broadcasting any messages into my private space."
 
Sardar Rana, a spokesman for the Central Mosque, said "the call is going on in so many places in the UK, and we must get the same right as everybody else."
 
"When they ring the bells in church, we respect it but that is also a call to prayer," he was quoted as saying by Britain's Daily Mail.