Minneapolis City Council voted anonymously on Thursday to allow broadcasts of the Muslim call to prayer at all times, becoming the first major American city to do so.
“The Constitution doesn’t sleep at night,” said Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, after the vote.
He said the action in Minneapolis shows the world that a “nation founded on freedom of religion makes good on its promise,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.
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The Adhan is the call to announce that it is time for a particular obligatory Salah (ritual prayer). It is recited five times a day.
Thursday’s vote, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, crowned a years-long effort to allow more calls to be broadcast in Minneapolis.
While the prayers have been broadcast in Minneapolis before, the ordinance prevented some dawn and evening calls. Dawn can arrive shortly after 5 am in the summer, and sunsets after 9 pm.
Minneapolis has had a flourishing East African immigrants population since at least the 1990s, and mosques there are common.
Three council members — Aisha Chughtai, Jeremiah Ellison and Jamal Osman — identify as Muslim.
“Minneapolis has become a city for all religions,” said Imam Mohammed Dukuly of Masjid An-Nur mosque in Minneapolis, who was among several Muslim leaders who witnessed the vote.
Last month, an American Muslim activist has successfully obtained an official permit to raise the sound of Adhan, or call to prayer, five times a day in Astoria, New York.