USA (MNN) — Minneapolis recently became the first U.S. city to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer at all hours. Last year, the city allowed year-round broadcasts, but only between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m.
“I think this is a wake-up call for the U.S. Church,” Pierre Houssney of Horizons International says.
“Sometimes it takes an issue like this to [make known] the fact that Muslim communities are springing up and growing in the U.S.”
There was no organized opposition to the April decision, but “you may find Muslims moving out of Minneapolis because they don’t want to hear that like they used to hear back in their home country,” Houssney says.
“The call to prayer for Muslims is not always positive. Many Muslims left their countries running away from the oppression of Islam.”
Religious freedom enables public expressions like the Muslim call to prayer, but it’s not always met with favor from the wider community.
“A partner church in California used to ring its bells on Sunday morning around service time. [Then,] the community had a petition to stop the ‘noise pollution’ on a Sunday morning and not allow the church to ring its bells,” Houssney says.
In Minnesota, a spate of mosque attacks followed the April decision allowing the call to prayer broadcasts in Minneapolis. However, issues like these don’t have to cause division between Muslims and Christians.
“We need to respond [by] equipping the church in the U.S. to bring the Gospel to Muslims,” Houssney says.
“Whether we’re in Lebanon, China, or the truth of the Great Commission remains the same. We are to love our Muslim neighbors [and] we need to find ways of being salt and light and have a winsome witness among them.”
Horizons International offers training and resources here.
Houssney asks readers to “pray about their church’s role in the Great Commission among Muslims. Through prayer, we’re going to have mobilization.”
Header image is a representative stock photo courtesy of Michael Burrows/Pexels.
