Blackburn muslim magistrate in row over 'noisy prayers'
Police attended the exclusive detached house of Zah Hussain in Meins Road, Blackburn, after complaints from neighbours.
Around 50 people were at the event which saw prayers and hymns broadcast inside the house for 90 minutes.
But some nearby neighbours said the sound levels disturbed the peace of the sunny, Sunday afternoon.
Mr Hussain, a local JP, said he and his wife were ‘very upset’ by the complaints.
It was the third year the family had staged the event, which is led by a specially-invited Imam from India, and raises money for the country’s poor.
Mr Hussain, the marketing director at a pharmaceutical firm, said: “A man turned up on my doorstep and said ‘Sunday is a Christian day. What is all this noise. We don’t want it here’.
“This is a cultural issue, not a noise issue, and it creates a sense of division.
"Being a magistrate, I know what noise pollution is and I wasn’t breaking the law.”
However, Tony and Wendy Egerton, of nearby Carrs Wood estate, described the noise as ‘horrendous’.
Mrs Egerton said: “We were trying to sit and relax. You don’t get too many days as nice as it was on Sunday.
“I rang the police and they said it was nothing to do with them, it was down to environmental health.
“We are not racist, we get on with everyone. We just wanted the peace and quiet that you expect in your back garden.”
“But it was like living outside a mosque.”
Mr Egerton said: “It is nothing to do with cultural issues.”
The couple are now to make a formal complaint to the Environmental Health department.
Another resident, who confronted the Hussains, denied telling Mr Hussain that Sunday was a Christian day.
He said: “Each to their own, but I told them that the rest of Blackburn didn’t want to hear it.”
A police spokesman confirmed they received a call about music and advised the caller to contact Environmental Health.
A spokesman for the council's Environmental Health department said no official complaint had been received.
