Last Thursday, January 29, about twenty students and faculty gathered to listen to a talk on the place of religious sound in a pluralist society. Drawing from his research on the 2004 public debate surrounding the adhan (call to prayer) in Hamtramck, the speaker, Isaac Weiner, a professor of comparative studies at The Ohio State University, discussed tensions and reactions to the inescapable public presence religious sound: what sounds are sanctioned, and which ones merely tolerated, while others are strictly proscribed. For Weiner, the logic of pluralism generated several responses to religious sound, ranging from domesticating religious traditions (in effect,…

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