Israeli pol wants mosque to quiet down

A member of the Israeli parliament has demanded that the mosque near her home on the West Bank turn down the volume of its loudspeakers.

Esterina Tartman asked Environment Secretary Gideon Ezra to order the mosque in a nearby Palestinian village to broadcast the call to prayer more quietly, Ynetnews reported. She did this in the middle of Ramadan, the holiest time of the year for Muslims.

Tartman heads the Knesset bloc of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party. She lives in a settlement on the West Bank.

The call to prayer comes from the muezzin, a man standing atop the minaret of a mosque. But in recent years, many mosques have used amplifiers to help the muezzin and have even adopted prerecorded calls.

The reaction on Muslim Web sites was predictably hostile.

"I'm not surprised at Tartman's request. She is an enemy and occupier, she is not Muslim, and she fights Islam," said one man, who used the name Hamdan. "Yet regrettably, there are also Arab and Muslim states that want the same thing."

Some Christian Palestinians sympathized with Tartman. One Bethlehem resident, after wishing Muslims a "blessed Ramadan," suggested that they have to learn to share the country.

"This country belongs to all of us, and it's also the cradle of Christianity. And don't tell me 'go to France' etc," the message said.