Islam in space

hairyheretic

Came across this news story on the BBC website, and thought it might be of interest here.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4941816.stm

A two-day conference on Islam and life in space is under way in Malaysia, in a bid to answer questions faced by would-be Muslim astronauts.

Malaysia is due to send an astronaut into space with the Russians next year.

The country's first spaceman is almost certain to be a Muslim, which raises a number of practical issues.

For instance, Muslims wash before they pray but not only is water a precious commodity in space, but it is also impractical in weightlessness.

Likewise, the faithful face Mecca. However, that will mean pin-pointing a moving location while in zero gravity.

And Muslim prayer times are linked to those of the sunrise and sunset, but in orbit the sun appears to rise and set more than a dozen times a day.

Serious discussion

Malaysia's science ministry has called together a group of experts to thrash out these and other questions.

It is being billed as the first-ever serious discussion of the issues.

It is in keeping with the Malaysian government's mission to promote what it calls Islam Hadhari, or civilisational Islam, which encourages Muslims to embrace education, science and technology.

It will doubtless be hoping that a conference of Muslim scientists and scholars debating such cutting edge issues will not go unnoticed in the rest of the Islamic world.

Any thoughts on how they might resolve the questions regarding washing and facing Mecca?

blackthorn

Well, the washing issue is easily resolved - a Muslim astronaut can do 'tayammum' which is dry ablution. So he or she will be ritually clean for prayer, but will not need to use water.

For the prayer times, I expect they will use the same prayer times as Mecca.

Facing Mecca - I don't know. I will be interested to see what the conference recommends

larryone

surely facing earth is sufficient...? Considering accuracy with regard to direction for the way most muslims pray, simply facing downward should be sufficient considering the circumstances.

Wibbs

Correct me here, but are there not special circumstances where the faithful can delay or skip prayer? Would this not be one of those times?

blackthorn

Yes, during travelling some prayers can be shortened and in some cases two prayers can be combined.

DublinWriter

hairyheretic wrote:

Any thoughts on how they might resolve the questions regarding washing and facing Mecca?

I remember seeing an interview about 5 years ago with a NASA astronaut who was a devout Muslim.

He spoke to his Imman about this, and I think he was covered as long as he was facing planet Earth during prayers, as he'd be technically facing Mecca.

Again, from my not-so-devout Muslim ex-collegues in the UK, Islam is a lot like Catholicism in that 'intent' can be just as important as action. Catholics are supposed to say the Angelus twice daily.

I worked with about a dozen muslims during my time in the UK, mostly UK born, some Pakistaani and some Indian, none of them were dropping to the floor and facing east! Most couldn't have been arsed about doing Haj in their lifetimes either.

The only tradition they actively stuck to was only eating Halal meat, even the lapsed Mosque goers refused to touch anything other than Halal.

About 1/4 of them drank, and but only when their missuses were away.

the_new_mr

Well, I can't say what the scholars will come up with but I imagine it'll be something along the lines of:

As blackthorn mentioned, tayamum will likely be enough for ablution. This is the act of using dust or sand to perform ablution rather than water and does not have as many movements.

As already mentioned also, the prayer time of Mecca will probably be fine as well as just facing earth for prayer. If that's not possible, then I guess it would be okay to simply pray in any direction since it would be the astronaut's intention to pray in the right direction if they were able to.

Sorry to hear about the not-so-devout Muslims that you mentioned there DublinWriter.

In one of your statements, you said:

DublinWriter wrote:

Islam is a lot like Catholicism in that 'intent' can be just as important as action

Not sure if you meant that intent is as important as action or if it isn't. Just to clarifiy, an extract of one hadith (saying) of the Prophet (peace be upon him) is "actions are measured by intentions"

If someone intends to do a good deed and can't do it for reasons outside of their control, they get rewarded as if they had done it. If they do a good deed, it may be written as 1, 10 or many more good deeds in their account. If someone thinks of doing a bad thing and then doesn't do it, they also get rewarded for resisting temptation to do a bad thing. If someone actually goes through with the bad deed, they get one bad deed written against them. Such is the mercy of God, the Most Merciful.