God Has 4,000 Loudspeakers; the State Holds Its Ears (Egypt) NYT

[Rose Siding]

snip>
The minister, Mahmoud Hamdi Zaqzouq, announced that one official call to prayer would be broadcast live from one central Cairo mosque five times a day, and that it would be carried simultaneously by the 4,000-plus mosques and prayer halls across the capital.

From the ensuing national brouhaha - the outraged headlines, the scathing editorials, the heated debates among worshipers - one might gain the impression that Mr. Zaqzouq was leading an assault against Islam itself. "Minarets Weep," intoned one banner headline, while another suggested sarcastically that the minister was less than a good Muslim. "The Call to Prayer Upsets Minister," it read.

Comedians and intellectuals had a field day. Ali Salem, one of the Egypt's leading playwrights, envisioned a turbaned, high-tech SWAT team dispatched across Cairo whenever one mosque or another inevitably sabotaged the centralized prayer-call operation.

Not everyone ridiculed the idea, though.

Secular Cairenes endorsed it as a possible means toward greater government control over all of the tiny storefront mosques that have often proved a font of violent, extremist Islam. And Mr. Zaqzouq insisted that his proposal enjoyed wide grass-roots popularity.......

http://nytimes.com/2004/10/12/international/middleeast/12mosques.html?hp&ex=1097553600&en=265476279327d5ea&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Ohio rules]

1. get cable nt

[AtTheEndOfTheDay]

2. Big Brother, Moslem style

Like the airwaves in the USA under Powell.

[VegasWolf]

3. Simple, if it takes 50,000 watts to reach god, then how

omnipotent is he? Would 60,000 catch his ear?

[DuctapeFatwa]

4. US ordered that all sermons be vetted, a while ago

At least one cleric has sued, it wasn't a secret thing, but the US-funded puppet government there prefers not to acknowledge or discuss it.