A controversial Israeli bill that would codify restrictions on the Islamic call to prayer, known as the adhan, has cleared a critical legislative hurdle, drawing sharp condemnation from senior Muslim religious leaders and Palestinian communities who frame the measure as an attack on their religious identity and a violation of international law.
On Sunday, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation — the body that vets whether proposed bills move forward for a preliminary vote in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset — advanced the legislation. The bill was submitted by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Zvika Fogel, chair of the Knesset’s National Security Committee, and while it has secured committee backing, it still requires approval from the full Knesset, with no vote date scheduled as of yet.
Under the terms of the proposed law, the installation and operation of loudspeakers for religious calls to prayer would be banned by default, with permits granted only at the discretion of Israeli authorities. Approval would hinge on a set of criteria including volume limits, required noise reduction infrastructure, a mosque’s geographic location, proximity to residential neighborhoods, and the perceived impact on local residents. If permit conditions are violated, police would gain the authority to immediately order loudspeakers shut off, with repeated violations leading to equipment confiscation and steep financial penalties: unpermitted loudspeaker use would carry a fine of 50,000 Israeli shekels (approximately $17,719), while violations of permit terms would incur a 10,000 shekel fine (around $3,545).
Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, the imam of Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque — one of the holiest sites in Islam and a flashpoint of longstanding Israeli-Palestinian tension — labeled the latest legislative push a dangerous escalation of repeated, previously unsuccessful efforts to curtail the adhan. “The current attempt to ban the Muslim call to prayer has taken a dangerous turn by legalising the banning of the call to prayer through issuing a law to prohibit it,” Sabri stated on Monday. He emphasized that Israeli authorities have no legitimate standing to classify the centuries-old religious practice as unwanted noise or a public nuisance, arguing “The disturbance and noise come from the war machines of the aggressors.”
The bill’s backers have defended the proposal as a necessary public health and quality of life measure. Ben Gvir has claimed that excessive noise from muezzins (the religious figures who recite the adhan) harms the well-being of Israeli residents, saying, “In many places, the noise of the muezzin is unreasonable and harms the quality of life and health of residents. This is a phenomenon that cannot be tolerated.”
Palestinian citizens of Israel, who would bear the direct brunt of the new regulations, have widely condemned the proposal, rejecting the claim that the adhan constitutes a noise problem. They argue the legislation is just the latest example of the current Israeli government’s systematic efforts to erode Palestinian religious and cultural identity across territories under Israeli control.
A key unresolved question remains: whether the new rules would apply to Al-Aqsa Mosque, located in occupied East Jerusalem. Israel formally annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, a move that has never been recognized by the international community. Consistent with international law, most of the global community regards East Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian territory, holding that an occupying power cannot claim sovereignty over the area and is barred from implementing permanent legal or structural changes to the occupied territory. Sabri emphasized this principle, noting that as an occupying power, Israel “has no right to alter the existing status quo of the occupied territory” and “has no right to enact laws that contradict the laws that were in effect in the country before its occupation.”
Efforts to restrict the adhan in Israel are not a new development. In 2017, a nearly identical bill targeting loudspeaker use for the Islamic call to prayer passed a preliminary Knesset reading but was never enacted into law. Most recently, at the end of 2024, Ben Gvir already issued a directive ordering Israeli police to block mosques from broadcasting the adhan, repeating his claim that the practice disturbs Jewish residents.