How to mute speech recognition from detecting itself while mp3 is playing on another thread

I have a python speech recognition assistant and it plays mp3 audios it downloads. I have put playing the mp3 on a separate thread in the background.

The issue is that the speech recognition tries to detect what the mps audio is saying and it responds.

How can I make the speech recognition be silent until I give specific speech to wake it up?

Here is my function file for playing and retrieving the mp3:

def play_quran():
    speak("Ready to play Quran. Tell me which Surah number you want to hear.")
    #qari_num = input("Enter Surah Number: ")
    qari_num = recordAudio()
    url = ("https://api.quran.com/api/v4/chapter_recitations/9/" + str(qari_num))
    print(url)
    response = requests.get(url)
    my_dictionary = requests.get(url).json()
    rdata = response.json()
    print(json.dumps(my_dictionary, indent=4))
    surah_to_play = (my_dictionary['audio_file']['audio_url'])
    print(surah_to_play)
    response = request.urlretrieve(surah_to_play, qari_num + ".mp3")
    os.system("mpg123 -q " + qari_num + ".mp3")
    stop_listening = sr.Recognizer().listen_in_background(sr.Microphone(), recordAudio)
#    time.sleep(2)
#    exit()

Here is the code that calls the function above:

if "play Quran" in data:
    speak("opening Quran. One moment please")
    t = threading.Thread(
        target=play_quran)  # < Note that I did not actually call the function, but instead sent it as a parameter
    t.daemon = True
    t.start()  # < This actually starts the thread execution in the background

Thanks.

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