COME LETS REASON TOGETHER By Ibrahim Teslim, Abdullahi Now that LASEPA has woken up to their statutory responsibilities by shutting down religious places (like Churches and Mosques), club houses, hotels and what have you in the city of Lagos due to noise pollution. Some religious bodies have started criticizing the Lagos State Government on the "strange" steps of closing Churches and Mosques which are regarded as "Houses of God" respectively. No doubt they are house of God where people worship everyday and in some weekly. The religious leaders argument was that the government show no respect to "Houses of God". Now, this is where I separate the wheat from the shaft. Firstly I'm going to speak on my constituency which is debating noise pollution from the mosques perspective. As a Muslim, I believe and this is no bragging that there is nothing on earth that Islam has not contributed to nor provided solutions for. The Messenger of Allah (SAW) said in one of his authentic Ahadith that "LA DORARA WALA DIRARA" meaning "Do not inconvenient people and don't allow people to inconvenient you". The above Hadith has solved the argument on the topic of discussion because when calling to prayers with your megaphone or loudspeaker connected to the mosques disturb people in your neighborhood either of the same faith or different faith, you have to respect his/ her rights by disconnecting the loud speakers from the mosque building. As this judgement goes for the Muslims, I think the same common sense can be applied to our Christian neighbours to also remove the speakers connected outside their Church building as well to respect the feelings of people of other religion living in their neighborhood as well, in order to maintain peaceful co-existence among ourselves. If it were in muslim dominated areas or Christian dominated areas it will be understandable to use the speakers to the public. More so, this practice is only common in Africa. In Europe and America hardly will you see a mosque has a speaker connected to its building and yet you will see hundreds of people driving or trooping to the mosques (where there are no loudspeakers to call them to prayers) are more in populations than here where we call every now and then yet very minute faithfuls grace the call. Should we say those people understand the knitty gritty of Islam than we people in this part of the world? Common sense will judge. My final take is, we should accept whatever reactions from State government in controlling #NoisePollution in our environment. We shouldn't be bias in our judgement as we have no solid evidence to fight the government as far as Islam is concerned on noise pollution, than to accept their judgement which goes in consonance with the teaching of Rasul (SAW). Please note, I'm not a government agent should you think may be I have collected money from Lagos state government. I am speaking as an Islamic personality to address the truth on whoever ox is gored. Bi Salam!