DURHAM, N.C. – Concerns are being raised after Duke University’s student paper announced this week that the Muslim call to prayer will be broadcast from university’s bell tower each Friday.

“Members of the Duke Muslim Students Association will chant a weekly call-to-prayer from the Duke Chapel bell tower beginning Friday, Jan. 16,” Duke Today outlined in a report on Tuesday. “The chant, called the ‘adhan,’ announces the start of the group’s jummah prayer service, which takes place in the chapel basement each Friday at 1 p.m.”

The university further outlines that the adhan, customarily performed in Arabic, “is typically chanted from the minaret of the mosque to remind the faithful of prayer five times a day.” But in this case, it will be held weekly as an invite to Muslims on campus to participate in the Friday high prayers.

“I bear witness that there is none worthy of being worshiped except Allah,” the adhan declares. “I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. … Allah is most great.”

“Students passing by the chapel quad at 12:45 p.m. on a Friday afternoon might catch sight of the student muezzin facing Mecca in the chapel tower,” Christy Lohr Sapp, the chapel’s associate dean for religious life, wrote in a piece for the News Observer. “If those same students do not have earbuds in, they might catch a strain of the Arabic proclamation, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ which means ‘God is great!’ And, if they are so inclined, they might say a quick prayer under their breath or even pause for a moment’s reflection.”

Duke University, which was founded by Methodists and Quakers in the 1800’s and carries the motto “Knowledge and Faith,” notes that it hired its first full-time Muslim chaplain in 2009 and also launched its Center for Muslim Life that same year. It says that there are more than 700 students at the Bible Belt university that identify as Muslim.

While Duke University has a variety of student groups on campus, and according to CNN, has “dedicated spaces … for various faiths, including Jews, Hindus and Buddhists” as well as Christians, officials at the university says that their latest decision to allow the Muslim call to prayer at the bell tower demonstrates the institution’s diversity.

   

“This opportunity represents a larger commitment to religious pluralism that is at the heart of Duke’s mission,” Sapp told the student newspaper. “It connects the university to national trends in religious accommodation.”

But some are expressing concern that Islam is being welcomed and accommodated so easily in light of the violence that thousands of Muslims are committing worldwide in the name of Allah, whom they believe has called them to take over the world with Sharia law.

“I wonder how Duke or atheists would feel if Christians wanted to recite the Lords Prayer once a week?” Tweeted local radio talk show host Bill LuMaye.

Franklin Graham said that sponsors should withhold their funding until Duke ends the practice.

“As Christianity is being excluded from the public square and followers of Islam are raping, butchering, and beheading Christians, Jews, and anyone who doesn’t submit to their Sharia Islamic law, Duke is promoting this in the name of religious pluralism,” he wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday. “I call on the donors and alumni to withhold their support from Duke until this policy is reversed.” ChristianNews

Duke backs down, cancels Muslim call to prayer from chapel tower

Duke University has abandoned its plan to transform the bell tower on the Methodist school’s neo-gothic cathedral into a minaret where the Muslim call to prayer was to be publicly broadcast.

“Duke remains committed to fostering an inclusive, tolerant and welcoming campus for all of its students,” university spokesman Michael Schoenfeld said in a statement. “However, it was clear that what was conceived as an effort to unify was not having the intended effect.”

The first adhan, or call to prayer, had been scheduled to be broadcast on Jan. 16. University officials said, the Islamic chant, which includes the words “Allahu Akbar” would have been “moderately amplified” -- in both English and Arabic. 

    Graham said Muslims have a right to worship in America. He also said there are millions of “wonderful people in Islam that want to live their life and raise their children and they want to be free.” But he also said that Islam is not a peaceful religion.

However, the decision brought a firestorm of national criticism from a number of high profile leaders including Franklin Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham.

“This is a Methodist school and the money for that chapel was given by Christian people over the years so that the student body would have a place to worship the God of the Bible,” Graham told me in a telephone interview.

He had called for university donors to pull their funding – (and I suspect that had something to do with Duke’s decision.)

Instead, the prayers will be moved to outside the chapel.

“Members of the Muslim community will now gather on the quadrangle outside the Chapel, a site of frequent interfaith programs and activities,” Schoenfeld said.

The university did not say whether the Muslim call to prayer would be “moderately amplified” at the new location.

Christy Lohr Sapp, Duke’s associate dean for religious life, heralded the Muslim call to prayer in a column published by the NewsObserver.com.

“The use of it as a minaret allows for the interreligious reimagining of a university icon,” Lohr Sapp wrote.

For the record, the university says the chapel is not exclusively used for Christian worship. It's used by students of many different religions.

She imagined what it would be like for a students to walk through the chapel quad and “catch the sight of the student muezzin facing Mecca in the Chapel tower” and how “they might catch a strain of the Arabic proclamation, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ which means ‘God is great.’”

“This opportunity represents a larger commitment to religious pluralism that is at the heart of Duke’s mission and connects the university national trends in religious accommodation,” Lohr Sapp said.

I suspect that would not have gone over very well on Friday, September 11, 2015. Imagine the nation pausing to remember the 2001 Islamic terror attacks as students at Duke University heard the words “Allahu Akbar” echoing from the school’s chapel bell tower.

The idea of a historically Methodist university nearly turning its Christian cathedral to a mosque may very well be a first in the United States.

“I am not aware of any other church bell tower that is also used to announce the Muslim call to prayer,” Lohr Sapp wrote in her NewsObserver.com column.

Graham said Muslims have a right to worship in America. He also said there are millions of “wonderful people in Islam that want to live their life and raise their children and they want to be free.”

But he also said that Islam is not a peaceful religion.

It seems to me that allowing Muslim prayers inside a Christian chapel is akin to desecration, I told Rev. Graham.

“I think that chapel was probably desecrated many years ago,” he replied.

Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the historic First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, and a Fox News contributor called the university’s decision a travesty.

“If I were an evangelical student attending Duke University, I would go to the administration officials today and say that after the 1 p.m. call to prayer by Muslims – I  want to get on the public address system and quote John 3:16,” Jeffress told me. “I wonder how diverse Duke would be with that request?”

Duke University has a growing Muslim student population. In 2014, More than 700 of the school’s 14,850 students claim to be Muslim. In 2009, the university created the Center for Muslim Life and hired its first full-time Muslim chaplain.

“The chanting of the adhan communicates to the Muslim community that it is welcome here, that its worship matters, that these prayers enhance the community and that all are invited to stop on a Friday afternoon and pray,” Lohr Sapp wrote.

She hoped that hearing the chant might help Muslim students “feel more at home in a world marred by weekly acts of violence and daily discriminations.”

“From ISIS to Boko Haram to Al Qaeda, Muslims in the media are portrayed as angry aggressors driven by values that are anti-education and anti-western,” she wrote in her column.

Jeffress said Methodists need to revolt.

“Methodist parishioners who believe the Bible is the word of God ought to demand that their denomination cut off any support to Duke,” he told me.  “I think John Wesley would be turning over in his grave. This is certainly not the Methodism of John Wesley – a faith that was firmly founded on the Bible.”

I’m still hung on up a phrase that Dean Sapp used – “interreligious reimagining.” In reality, the cathedral has been conquered – desecrated in the name of political correctness. FOX