European Country Moves To Ban Islamic Call To Prayer

Denmark is preparing to outlaw the public broadcast of the Islamic call to prayer.

Immigration Minister Morten Bødskov announced this week that the government would relaunch an inquiry into whether a nationwide prohibition on the Adhan — the traditional summons to prayer broadcast five times daily from mosque loudspeakers — could be enacted without violating constitutional protections for religious freedom. Bødskov, a Social Democrat, framed the move in blunt terms, arguing that parts of Denmark risked losing their cultural identity to what he called a slow creep of Islamization. He said the country should sound and feel distinctly Danish, not like a neighborhood in a Pakistani city.

Some Danish localities, including Copenhagen, already effectively silence outdoor calls to prayer through strict noise regulations. A new investigation would seek to determine whether a uniform national ban could be written to survive legal challenge under Denmark’s constitution, which protects the right to public worship while already permitting limits on anti-democratic religious speech.

The move fits a broader pattern in Danish policy. Under Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, Denmark has cultivated some of the most restrictive immigration rules in Europe, including laws that allow authorities to resettle migrants out of neighborhoods deemed to have too high a concentration of foreign-born residents. Denmark is home to roughly 270,000 Muslims and around 100 mosques in a general population of about six million.

The Danish debate is one front in a wider international conversation about the call to prayer’s place in Western cities. In Australia, a Sydney-area local government is weighing planning rules that would bar mosques from installing outdoor loudspeakers for the call to prayer as a preemptive response to a pending application from a mosque in Lakemba.

The picture looks markedly different in parts of the United States. New York City moved in 2023 to eliminate permit requirements for mosques to broadcast the Adhan on Fridays and during Ramadan, with Mayor Eric Adams describing the change as an overdue step toward inclusion. Minneapolis that same year became the first major American city to allow unrestricted outdoor broadcasts at any hour. But in Dearborn, Michigan — home to one of the country’s largest Arab-American communities — residents have lodged noise complaints against mosques, and city officials have confirmed that at least one mosque was found in violation of local ordinances following decibel testing.