A Feminist Call to Prayer from Ritually

Snap Judgment

Snap Judgment and PRX

Snap, Glynn, Storytelling, Wnyc, Society & Culture/personal Journals, Performing Arts, Washington, Society & Culture/documentary, Arts/performing Arts, Music, Arts

4.8 • 11.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2023

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nelufar grew up with a Muslim upbringing, and she’s about to dig into a ritual that’s at the center of her religion: the daily call to prayer. It’s a practice uniting 1.8 billion Muslims around the world. But, for a lot of reasons, Nelufar never felt completely comfortable responding to that call. So Nelufar, she tries a slightly different approach.

This episode comes to us from our friends at Ritually. It’s Nelufar Hedayat’s new podcast, from Brazen Media. And In each episode, she tries out a new spiritual or wellness ritual to find out if practicing it can actually make you feel better. Want to hear more? Listen to Ritually wherever you get your podcasts!

BIG thanks to the entire Ritually team over there for their work on this beautiful piece: Sarah Kendal, Susie Armitage, Clair Urbahn, Troy Holmes, Bradley Hope, Tom Wright, Mariangel Gonzales, Lucy Woods, Charlotte Cooper, Francesca Gilardi Quadrio Curzio, Nour Abdel Latif, Megan Dean, Ryan Ho, and Julien Pradier.

Ritually’s theme music is by Amaroun. Original music is by Jay Brown. Artwork by Ryan Ho and Julien Pradier

Season 14 - Episode 33

Transcript

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0:00.0	Now, Judgment Studios.
0:31.0	Okay, so back in the day.
0:35.0	I still live in your three separate mosques.
0:39.0	One was basically across the street.
0:41.0	The other is not too far away.
0:43.0	And I loved living there.
0:45.0	Because several times a day, you'd hear the call to prayer.
1:01.0	I don't know if you've ever heard the call to prayer performed from a mosque.
1:10.0	And nowadays, some places they will use recordings, but where I live, they were old school.
1:18.0	No Spotify, CD play another at nonsense.
1:21.0	But your moms took the microphone themselves.
1:25.0	And they were not half-step in decades and decades of practice and history in each and every syllable.
1:32.0	This song, poem, recitation.
1:35.0	And yeah, they decided for the edification of who ever came to the mosque.
1:40.0	But the sound was amplified for the benefit of the neighborhood.
1:48.0	And it was beautiful every single day, right before dawn.
1:55.0	Beautiful.
2:02.0	And it wasn't like a competition between mosques, but when one mosque in my neighborhood
2:08.0	were finished, the other would often begin their version, their interpretation.
2:13.0	And you would hear echoes of one recitation even as the other one started.
2:21.0	And I'm overusing this word beautiful because it was just so glorious.
2:30.0	I was not raised in a Muslim tradition, but it still touched me.
	...

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