For a few weeks now, Germany's largest mosque in Cologne has been allowed to sound the muezzin's call over two loudspeakers.

And for conservative politicians it is once again a welcome opportunity to pull the old wishful thinking of the Christian-Jewish Occident out of the mothball box.

CDU veteran Wolfgang Bosbach justified his rejection of the Cologne pilot project in the daily newspaper "Die Welt" with the fact that "we don't have an Islamic, but a Christian-Jewish cultural tradition".

But the story of an idyllic Christian-Jewish tradition is a bit, how should you put it: a rather one-sided affair.

Sure, if you put aside centuries of exclusion and pogroms that ended in crematoria, Bosbach might agree.

The suspicion arises that they want to smooth over the German past,

However, longing for a society without Muslims is not just a Christian issue.

The Jewish publicist Henryk M. Broder sees the muezzin call as a breach in the dam and warns of a "surrender in installments" to Islam: "Get ready for the daily muezzin, he will come," he prophesies.

There are also critics in their own ranks.

The Muslim author Ahmad Mansour accuses the Germans of naivety in dealing with the Cologne mosque.

He criticizes the muezzin's call because he finds expressions like "Allah is great" and "Come to prayer" dangerous.

In both of our countries of origin, Pakistan and Israel, the Azaan, as the Islamic call to prayer is called, is part of everyday life.

In many cities, mosques compete against each other to see who has the most beautiful and loudest sound.

As we recently walked through the Old City of Jerusalem, the sounds of the church bells mingled with the calls of the muezzin to create a uniquely beautiful melody.

Not everyone feels that way: in Israeli politics, the muezzin calls are repeatedly exploited by Jewish right-wing radicals for their hatred of Arabs.

In 2016 there was a legislative initiative for a volume limit.

It was the Israel Association for Civil Rights, the largest independent human rights organization in Israel, that successfully campaigned against this encroachment on Muslim religious freedom.

By the way:

Even in countries with a large Muslim population, the issue of volume is a source of controversy.

In Indonesia, the country with the most Muslims in the world, the Christian minority in Tolikara protested against the loudness of the muezzin call in 2015 because it disturbed their own religious ceremony.

The protest ended bloody with several injured and one dead.

Christian symbols and rituals are part of our everyday life

Anyone who is afraid that muezzin calls in Cologne will be too loud can calm down: there has not yet been a significant increase in demand for ear plugs in Cologne.

The call must also not be louder than sixty decibels - for comparison: our son manages eighty decibels in an average night, effortlessly.