Personal anecdote time.
Yesterday (Sunday) we went shopping. We stopped at Office Depot to buy a new chair. As we approached the entrance, I spotted a friend of ours and called her name. We gathered outside the entrance to chat.
As we talked, a man approached us, begged our pardon, and asked for a personal opinion.
“Do any of you know what that is?” he asked, pointing across the parking lot.
That is a tower under contruction adjacent to a one-story building that used to be a bank and is now The Islamic Community Center. We’ve been watching the tower rise for months now, a very careful construction project because it is at least fifty feet tall, maybe more, a fluted column with other motifs on its white surface.
“Oh, it’s a minaret,” our friend said without missing a beat. Of course I thought makes perfect sense. “For call to prayer,” she continued. “Which is beautiful if you’ve ever heard it.”
“Do you think that’s appropriate?” the stranger asked.
“Why not?” I asked.
“You know the first one is at five in the morning,” he said. “I just wonder what the neighborhood around here will think.”
I turned around and from where we stood we could see three church steeples. “Probably no more than they think of the bells ringing on those.”
“But not at five A.M.” he said.
I looked at him. “What the problem? Bells are okay but a muezzin isn’t?”
“Well, this is a christian community.”
“I live in this community and I’m not a christian.”
He looked at me oddly.
“Get a petition up to shut down the bells ringing,” our friend said, “and we’ll back a ban on call to prayer.”
“I just wonder if anybody was asked what they thought,” this guy said in a huff and started to walk off.
“Evidently,” I said, “or they wouldn’t have gotten a permit to build the damn thing in the first place.”
He didn’t answer, just stalked off.
It won’t surprise me in the coming months to have a canvasser show up at my door now with a petition to have hearings on whether Those People should be allowed to make noise in This Community.
What part of tolerance don’t folks understand?
Oh. I forgot. As long as it’s not where we can see or hear it, we’re as tolerant as anyone.
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