Cyprus-Forum.com

[Tim Drayton]

Cem, you might find the following article interesting. It seems some people in Cairo are debating the same question.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4485521.stm

I lived in Qatar for a couple of years, and was struck by the very different approach to reading the azan that they have there. In Doha, the main city in Qatar, there are a relatively small number of huge palatial mosques. You normally only hear the azan coming from a single mosque at one time and it is not amplified very much. The result is very aesthetically pleasing.

[YFred]

Just to pick up on the point of the azan (as it is correctly spelt in English) - and I for one, having live in Anatolia for a long time, certainly know what it is - which the author of this thread perceives to be a major obstacle to settling the Cyprus problem, I came across the following interesting post on the following thread (4th post):

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:E_ ... clnk&cd=17

The title of the thread is "What is life like in the TRNC?". It is to be found on a website of the youth section of a large neo-fascist party in Turkey (MHP). The author of this post is clearly a devotee of the Turkish-Islamic synthesis, an ideology especially dear to the hearts of most MHP supporters. It sheds some interesting light on the way conservative mainland Turks view Turkish Cypriot society.

Those wishing to read the original Turkish text can click the above link; here is my English translation:

I have been in Cyprus for one week, and believe me I had this place worked out on the first day I spent here. I am studying at the Kyrenia American University. It is really a different environment. When I learned that I had been accepted here I was really delighted because this is a Turkish-Islamic land. But, believe me, it is no such thing. Humanity has vanished. Quite a lot of students have cars and and mixed sex groups sit in them and smoke cigarettes. Smoking is not shameful but is the done thing. There is no Turkish-Islamic youth or life here. Believe me, I can hardly hear the sound of the azan. The morning azan is not read because the Cypriot people have complained that it makes a noise in the morning and they cannot sleep so it is not read. Is there anything as wonderful as to live under the sound of the azan. I don’t think so. Young people have lost their way. Believe me, I feel like I am not in a Turkish state but somewhere else. The Cypriot people here have abandoned their own culture and traditions and have entirely adopted a foreign culture. And this of course is very bad. Cyprus should definitely be brought back into the fold. I am looking for Nationalist friends and cannot find any. There is a hearth [the term used by this party to describe its meeting places] only in Nicosia. This is also bad. I hope there is one at my university. May the Lord be your companion and protector.

The author here in saying, "The Cypriot people here have abandoned their own culture and traditions" totally fails to appreciate that over the four centuries plus in which Turkish-speakers have lived on the island they have developed their own unique culture. Turkish Cypriots are just a entitled to define their identity in their own terms as anybody else.

I think SoSolidCrew falls into a similar trap. Looking from Turkey, he imagines that the azan must be a serious issue in the Cyprus problem. Actually, in Cyprus this is a non-issue.

Quite right ! my TC fellows practice a much watered-down version of Islam which elevate them further in my esteem. Whereas in the south, the influence of the medieval greek orthodoxy is still lying at the root of their troubles.

BTW, whether from MHP or BBP or AKP, all islamofascists are landmarks of low I.Q.

As for Kyrenia American university both the level of education and the quality of their student intake speaks volumes as can be understood by this poor Chrysi Avgi's Turkish equivalent.

I couldn't help coming back and adding a note here about the azan in the north of Cyprus. I happened to be in the Arasta Street area of Nicosia yesterday at early evening prayer time. I was aware of the sound of the azan floating from a single mosque, the big one next to the closed market. It was not over-amplified and the person reading it had a pleasant melodic voice. It had a mystic, enchanting character to it.

How different from any town or city in Anatolia where the call to prayer is broadcast simultanously from a large number of mosques, each one seemingly vying with the other to amplify it from four loud speakers set at a deafening volume. The result, since each mosque's azan is slightly out of synch with the others, is that the tinny amplified sounds of human voices bawling out the call to prayer in a language whose sounds and cadence most of the readers have not really mastered fuses into a hideous, deafening cacophany.

The Turkish Cypriot approach to reading and broadcasting the azan wins hand down for me.

With the exception of Lurucina, where to annoy the Limya residents, the local Imam puts his volume to full. If you are in bed, you are likely to jump out of your skin!
Poor Lurucadis.