Tempers Flare Over Loud Islamic Prayers in ‘Muslimville, USA’

Residents of Hamtramck, Michigan – the area dubbed “Muslimville, USA,” by one newspaper after its population shifted from 90 percent Polish to mostly Muslim – complained at their most recent city council meeting the community center’s blasted calls to prayer were simply too loud . . .

“Just turn it down a little bit,” said one resident, Jeanette Powell, telling the Hamtramck Review the prayer calls start at 6 a.m. and the sound level was “overbearing.”

Another resident [Carol Marsh] said Ideal Islamic Center officials “lied” when they assured nearby residents, including those at the Hamtramck Senior Plaza apartments, the facility would not be used as a mosque . . .

Sakrul Islam, with the center, said Marsh was mistaken, that an Islamic center “covers everything,” and that if she continued to make such claims he would file a defamation lawsuit, the newspaper said. He also accused Robert Zwolak, a city council member who lives in the senior apartment complex, of fueling complaints because “he’s against Muslims,” he said, the Hamtramck Review reported.

This isn’t the first time the Muslim community’s faced such complaints. In 2015, in a story that opened with “Welcome to Muslimville, USA,” the New York Daily News cited several residents as complaining about the early morning Muslim calls to prayer. (Read more from “Tempers Flare Over Loud Islamic Prayers in ‘Muslimville, USA'” HERE)

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