Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Islam in Space

I love the internet.

The second of these questions occurred to me on the subway last night (I was listening to an excellent Hajj-related podcast from the BBC archive). Thanks to the indescribeable wonder that is the internet, I have at least one answer to my question.

The questions:

  1. In the event of deep space travel, in which direction should a Muslim pray?
  2. If the event of a Muslim living her entire life in outer space, is she required to perform the Hajj (traditional one-in-a-lifetime visit to Mecca & Medina)?
  3. For a Muslim living in a distant solar system, how is Ramadan determined?
These are the questions. For the answers, I refer you to islamweb.net's Fatwa Center.

3 comments:

Edward Ott said...

i think that those reading this should realize that the Fatwa center is just one place of Islamic law opinion and i am sure you will get different opions on these matters but the opinions seem pretty well thought out. the Fatwa number for this issue is 6643

Andy said...

...hence "at least one answer," as opposed to "the answer."

Andy said...

Sadly, the fatwa on which this post is based was deleted from islamweb.net.

Fortunately, it still lives on here at archive.org.