Dearborn residents petition city to enforce noise ordinance against mosque

In Dearborn, Michigan, some neighbors are pressing city officials to enforce its noise ordinance, saying a nearby mosque’s daily call to prayer is disruptive and intrusive.

Andrea Unger, who has lived in Dearborn for 40 years, said the loudspeakers at a mosque about a quarter-mile from her home carry the call to prayer multiple times a day, often lasting about five minutes. She said the sound is so loud it can be heard clearly inside her home, sometimes as early as 5:30 a.m.

She has been raising concerns with the police department and city council for the past two years, but said the problem continues.

“Our city ordinance does not permit unusual, annoying sounds for five minutes or longer, but the mosque continues to violate our privacy inside our home daily,” she told Fox News Digital. “It’s not like going down to the park and people will ask you about God or someone comes to your door. This is coming into your home, and you have no choice.”

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At the Sept. 23 City Council meeting, Unger presented a petition signed by 40 neighbors urging enforcement of the city’s noise ordinance, which prohibits “the continuance of any unreasonably loud, disturbing, unusual or unnecessary noise which annoys, disturbs, injures, or endangers the comfort, repose, health, peace or safety of others within the limits of the city.”

The city ordinance states that noise in residential areas cannot exceed 55 decibels at night (after 10 p.m.) or 60 decibels during the day (7 a.m. to 10 p.m.). Loudspeakers are prohibited between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.

Unger told Fox News Digital she recorded the call to prayer for 30 consecutive days and found it consistently exceeded 70 decibels.

She emphasized that her concerns are not about religion, but about fairness and equal enforcement.

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“The Supreme Court has stated that no public school may have a specific prayer to a specific God. Yet this prayer to Allah is prayed on loudspeakers over our school grounds and our playgrounds daily. There is no atheist, Christian, Jewish, Catholic, or other group that is allowed to use loudspeaker to blast a five-minute prayer into the homes of people in the East Dearborn community,” she added.

Unger said that some of her neighbors were hesitant to speak out, fearing they would be labeled anti-Muslim.

“I have heard a lot of people say, ‘I’m glad you said something,’ because people are afraid they’ll get called names like ‘Islamophobic,’ like our mayor [Abdullah H. Hammoud] called [Dearborn resident and Christian minister] Ted Barham, because you disagree,” she said. “We’re not Islamophobic, we’re not anti-Muslim, we are not anti-Jewish. We just want to live in the community that it’s always been [before] something changed two years ago to allow this,” she told Fox News Digital.

City Council President Mike Sareini told residents last week at the city council meeting that police were investigating and had already found ordinance violations.

“It’s not legal, nor do we support it,” Sareini said, noting that he was waiting for a full report from the police chief before pursuing enforcement.

The Islamic Institute of Knowledge, the mosque at the center of Unger’s complaint, lists seven daily prayer times on its social media pages. 

Multiple attempts to reach the mosque for comment were unsuccessful.

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Another mosque in the city told Fox News Digital it had voluntarily lowered its sound system in response to community concerns.

“We always respect our neighbors,” said Nabeel Bahalwan, director of the Dearborn Community Center, which had also been mentioned in conversations around the issue. He said the center had shut off its microphone broadcasting the call to prayer until the matter is resolved.

Dearborn’s city council drew widespread attention in September after Mayor Abdullah H. Hammoud called Christian minister and Dearborn resident Ted Barham a “racist,” “bigot” and an “Islamophobe” after he raised objections over street signs being renamed to honor a controversial Islamic leader.

The Dearborn Police Department and City Council did not return Fox News Digital’s request for comment.