Directing the Muslim Call to Prayer Over the Cityscape

Abstract

The Muslim call to prayer, also known as the adhan, is one of the most public acts of worship regularly practiced today. Muslims living in diverse cities and towns throughout the world recite it from their homes, masjids and community spaces. In America, the public amplification of the call to prayer in diverse urban environments has become a point of contention with its opponents centering it at the forefront of debates regarding secularism, freedom of religion, zoning practices, and Islamophobia. This paper seeks to provide an engineering solution to a social problem by proposing a new method of broadcasting the adhan. By optimizing a phased linear array to broadcast the adhan from a minaret using beamforming and beam steering, this research proposes a potential path forward for Muslim communities that want to broadcast the adhan publicly without upsetting their neighbors. The proposed speaker is capable of creating a bright zone of sound while isolating adjacent areas that may not want to hear the Muslim call. The design thinking, simulations, and measurements that went into optimizing this design are detailed in this paper along with proposed features for a prototype design.