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Sunday, 27 January 2008

Rod Liddle on the minarets of Oxford:

Oxford’s Muslim leaders wish to broadcast the Adhan – an amplified, prerecorded call to prayer – across the dreaming spires of the city, five times a day. Many nonMuslims in Oxford are upset about this, but not the Bishop of Oxford, John Pritchard. He thinks it’s terrific.

The first line of the Adhan is: “I bear witness that there is no divinity but Allah”, which you might think would grate a little with a chap in Pritchard’s line of work. But it is possible he doesn’t know this and thinks the muezzin is simply saying something agreeably consensual and inclusive, the sort of thing Pritchard might shout out if suddenly hoisted upon the spire of his cathedral just before evensong. “Hello everybody! Not absolutely sure there’s a God at all, in a real sense, but why not drop in for a nice singsong?”

In any case, Pritchard says he sees himself, somewhat presumptuously, as a “community leader of all faiths”. I’m not absolutely certain that he would be accepted as such by Oxford’s Muslims (nor indeed, the city’s communities of Roman Catholics, Jews, Hindus, Scientologists and Satanists). If, however, Pritchard can do a sort of exchange deal and get the Saudis to allow church bells to ring out across Riyadh, say, then those who object might change their tune.

Liddle realises, where the Bishop of Oxford does not, that Islam doesn't go a bundle on reciprocity.

Posted on 01/27/2008 6:05 AM by Mary Jackson
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