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Minneapolis City Council poised to vote on allowing a full daily set of Muslim prayer calls
Minneapolis mosques would be able to broadcast the adhan — the Islamic call to prayer —five times a day under a proposed ordinance unanimously approved March 29 by the City Council’s Public Health and Safety Committee.
The resolution would expand the number of times a mosque could issue the call to prayer from three or four to five, meaning that morning and sometimes evening prayers no longer would be excluded.
The ordinance still must be approved by the full council and Mayor Jacob Frey before it could take effect. That could happen later this week. It was authored by council member Aisha Chughtai, who represents Ward 10, in collaboration with Ward 6 council member Jamal Osman and Ward 5 member Jeremiah Ellison. The three make up the council’s Muslim Caucus.
Muslim community members and elders were joined at last week’s public hearing by Christian and Jewish religious leaders and activists, many of whom hoisted signs that read “Minneapolis for Religious Freedom.”
“It is really important for all people in Minneapolis and in our communities to experience and practice religious freedom to the fullest extent that our state, local, and federal laws allow,” Chughtai said after the hearing.
Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, praised the Christian and Jewish organizers who showed up to support the Muslim community.
“Even though it’s a call to prayer for Muslims, the fight for religious freedom has to be done by everyone, because a threat against one religion or one race is a threat against all,” Hussein said.
“Our way of being in the neighborhood is to support and nurture folks,” said the Rev. Jane Buckley-Farlee, senior pastor at Trinity Lutheran Congregation in Minneapolis’ Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, who testified in support of the ordinance. “We wanted to support them in that effort because of that.”
The decision came a week into Ramadan, a holy month in the Islamic lunar calendar during which Muslims who are able fast from dawn until dusk, abstaining even from water. It is also a time for prayer and community. This year, Ramadan intersects with both Passover and Easter.
A positive ‘shock wave to our community’
In 2020, the city of Minneapolis worked with Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Cedar-Riverside to permit broadcast of the adhan outdoors five times a day for the duration of Ramadan.
That decision “sent a shock wave to our community,” Hussein said during lthe recent public hearing.
It was warmly welcomed by Muslim community members, especially seniors, who felt isolated by COVID-19 lockdowns, he said.
“It was extremely difficult for them to not go to the mosque, something that they do as a daily thing,” Hussein said. “So having them be called [to prayer] and having that extension of connection to the mosque was pretty powerful, and gave them all something to really look forward to.”
Then, last spring, Minneapolis became one of just a few U.S. cities to allow such broadcasts year-round, although they were permitted only three or four times a day. An existing city ordinance limited the times of day during which the adhan could be played — a restriction that always excluded Muslims’ early morning prayer and sometimes excluded the night prayer. Because Islamic prayer times depend on the position of the sun, they vary from day to day.
While the 2020 decision had a tangible impact on Muslim elders, the 2022 decision was visibly most positive for Cedar-Riverside’s youth, said Wali Dirie, executive director of the Islamic Civic Society of America and Dar Al-Hijrah mosque.
“We’ve noticed a lot of young generation coming to the mosque,” Dirie said. Some even want to call the adhan themselves, a request the mosque is accommodating, he said.
Not only was the community’s reaction to the 2022 resolution overwhelmingly positive, Hussein said, non-Muslim “neighbors and community were actually very supportive,” he added.
Dar Al-Hijrah has even seen people travel from outside Minnesota just to hear the adhan in the United States, he said. “We’ve had people in vans, just waiting outside to listen,” he said.
Still, there was still a feeling that more needed to be done, Dirie said.
“As a Muslim leader, I feel as if my prayers are still incomplete when the morning one is left out,” he said at the public hearing.
Though all mosques in Minneapolis are permitted to broadcast the adhan, Hussein knows of only two — Dar Al-Hijrah and Masjid An-Nur in north Minneapolis — that have exercised their right to do so.
“We’re optimistic by next Ramadan that at least a handful more mosques will join them,” he said.
Full council to vote this week
The proposed ordinance will be voted on by the full City Council on Thursday. Chughtai and Hussein said they’re optimistic about its prospects. “Ninety-nine percent [certain] it will pass; that’s our assumption,” Hussein said.
Chughtai said she also believes that Frey will sign it.
In the meantime, Dar Al-Hijrah is ready. If the ordinance passes, Dirie said, it will begin broadcasting the adhan for all five prayers right away.
“We’re going to do it the next minute,” he said.
This story comes to you from Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering Minnesota’s immigrants and communities of color. Sign up for a free newsletter to receive Sahan’s stories in your inbox.
Star Tribune
Former Hubbard County official, school bus driver gets six-year sentence for sex crimes against students
A former Hubbard County commissioner and school bus driver was sentenced Friday to six years in prison for sex crimes involving minors.
Daniel J. Stacey, 60, was charged in April 2023 with criminal sexual conduct and electronic solicitation of a minor, both felonies, in Beltrami County District Court. He was then charged in November with nine additional felony counts related to criminal sexual contact with a minor.
Stacey pleaded guilty in June to four felony counts as part of a plea deal that dropped the remaining charges. His attorney, Joseph Tamburino, declined to comment Friday on the sentence, and officials with the Nevis school district did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.
Stacey resigned from the Hubbard County Board in January 2023 and was placed on leave from his school bus job during an investigation by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) that began after the parent of a Nevis student filed a complaint.
In an email Friday, Hubbard County Administrator Jeffrey Cadwell said he had no comment other than that Stacey’s actions “did not occur within the course and scope of his duties with the County and the County was completely unaware of them.”
According to a criminal complaint, Stacey offered to mentor a 13-year-old male on his bus route. He brought the boy to his property, asked him to watch pornography and tried to touch him in a sexual manner, court documents state.
The boy told investigators that Stacey told him not to tell anyone, and helped him rehearse what to say about doing chores at his property. Investigators said they found footage showing times Stacey would deactivate the school bus camera when the boy was the only student left on the bus.
A second criminal complaint outlines similar allegations against Stacey with a minor who was 14 years old.
Star Tribune
Woman charged as investigation into attack on north Minneapolis homeless shelter continues
A 33-year-old woman has been charged with two felonies in connection with an attack on a north Minneapolis homeless shelter that forced 54 women and children to relocate last week.
Eureka D. Riser, 33, of Minneapolis, is charged with second-degree rioting with a dangerous weapon and first-degree damage to property, according to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office. She was in custody Friday, a day after Minneapolis police confirmed her arrest.
Riser, also known as Eureka Willis, is alleged to have been in a group of at least three people who on Sept. 5 went to St. Anne’s Place, 2634 Russell Av. N., and threatened residents, smashing doors with a baseball bat.
Residents were forced to vacate the shelter, leaving it boarded with plywood and watched over by armed security. Building managers estimate that property damage amounts to more than $10,000, according to the county attorney’s office. Additional charges may be brought against others involved.
“This violent attack on some of our most vulnerable community members, unhoused women and children, in a place where they had gone to seek shelter and safety cannot be tolerated,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a statement.
Hoang Murphy, the CEO of People Serving People, which operates the shelter, said earlier this week that the four-hour episode was the culmination of an argument between shelter residents and neighbors over street parking that started days earlier and spilled over into violence.
According to the criminal complaint, which cites surveillance footage, Riser allegedly swung a baseball bat against the shelter’s doors, shattering glass while residents were inside. Another member of the group pointed what appears to be a gun at the front door of the building, the complaint says.
Residents have since been relocated to a hotel for safety reasons, costing People Serving People $9,000 a night — a figure that Murphy called unsustainable.
A man who was shot and wounded by sheriff’s deputies in east-central Minnesota while resisting arrest received a six-month jail term Friday.
Leo H. Hacker, 71, was sentenced in Pine County District Court in connection with his guilty plea in two cases of assault, and obstructing and fleeing law enforcement in connection with his clashes with deputies in February 2023.
Hacker’s sentences will be served concurrently and includes Judge Jason Steffen setting aside a three-year sentence sought by the County Attorney’s Office. Steffen’s terms also include five years’ probation and community work service.
According to the charges in each case and related court documents:
On Feb. 21, deputies tried to pull over Hacker’s pickup truck on a gravel road about a mile from his Pine City home. As two deputies approached his vehicle, he drove toward them. Both deputies opened fire on Hacker and wounded him.
Hacker was wanted at the time on charges of second-degree assault and obstructing law enforcement in connection with allegations that he pointed a gun at a deputy outside his home on Feb. 14 and angrily defied orders to drop the weapon.
At one point, Hacker warned the deputies that if they did not leave, he would return with “something bigger,” the charges quoted him as saying.
The deputy was there to seize Hacker’s SUV stemming from a dispute over his unpaid attorney fees, the charges read. However, law enforcement outside the home “determined that based on the totality of circumstances, it was in the interest of safety to leave the scene at that time” and instead seek a warrant for Hacker’s arrest, the criminal complaint continued.
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