By: OnIslam & News Agencies
Source: http://www.onislam.net/english/news/europe/462417-sweden-raises-first-ever-adhan.html
STOCKHOLM – Coming to Fittja Grand Mosque from early hours, Swedish Muslim worshippers gathered on Friday, April 26, to witness the recitation of the first ever Adhan in their country before the Friday prayer.
“This is a historic day,” Iman Upmann, a Swede converted to Islam 13 years ago, told The World Bulletin.
Earlier in April, local police ruled to allow Adhan at Fittja mosque in the southern Stockholm suburb of Botkyrka on Fridays.
The permission allows Muslims to raise the Adhan for three to five minutes between 12:00 pm and 1:00 pm on Fridays.
The move came in response to a request by Muslims to raise their call for prayers from the Fittja mosque, the only Muslim worship place that has a minaret in Sweden.
Sweden’s state-run television broadcast live while Fittja Grand Mosque’s imam recited the prayer call (adhan) via a loudspeaker from the minaret.
“I am very happy,” Guluz Kayhan told Turkish press as she tried to hold her tears back.
“I have been living in Sweden for 25 years and this is the first time I have ever heard the adhan from the minaret,” she added.
The Adhan is the call to announce that it is time for a particular obligatory Salah (ritual prayer).
The Adhan is raised five times a day.
But Muslims in the West were often unable to make Adhan for prayers as local authorities argue that the call would cause noise to residents.
Muslims make up between 450,000 and 500,000 of Sweden’s nine million people, according to the US State Department report in 2011.
