Yesh Atid leader MK Yair Lapid announced Tuesday that his party would vote against the Muezzin law which will be presented for a preliminary reading in the Knesset tomorrow.
"I am in favor of regulating the volume of the muezzins. There is no reason that they should wake entire neighborhoods at four in the morning. They cannot tell me that this offends their religious traditions as there were no loudspeakers when the Koran was written. Nevertheless I am opposed to the law. Why? Because such a law already exists," wrote Lapid on his Facebook page.
He maintained that the law concerning noise levels has been in existence for decades and allows police to enter any mosque or place and shut off the loudspeaker systems. "Why don't they do that? There are lots of reasons, some correct and some less correct but it is not because there is no law. There is a law but it is not enforced.
"Why did the coalition decide to pass a law which already exists? Because they want to insult Muslims," claimed Lapid, "This is the only reason. They want to call it the 'Muezzin law' because the 'noise ordinances' do not insult anyone. The ordinances did not create the conflict they were looking for. The ordinances were not serving Israel's enemies around the world who can now claim that in Israel there is no freedom of religion."
Lapid added that "they want to insult Muslims for the sake of insulting them. It has no practical significance but it looks good to their voters, to the (Likud) central committee, in the primaries.Worst of all, they assume that we can't love our country without hating someone."