ABSTRACT
Given the physics of the production of sounds and the physiology of their perception, when sound space is used as a communication channel, it turns into a limited resource. One of the main reasons for legal controversies about private sound spaces in multicultural cities stems from the fact that neighbours with different socio-cultural backgrounds sometimes conceive of the thresholds of their sound spaces in different ways. One of the purposes of a semio-geography of public soundscapes is to denaturalize them by pinpointing the way in which they have been brought about through competition among specific social agencies. The injection of religious sounds in the public sound space of contemporary cities is problematic from both the political and the legal point of view, especially as regards the present-day multicultural and multi-religious societies. Islamic sounds are not objected to qua generic sounds, in terms of decibels characterizing their sound pressure level.
