Friday, September 21, 2007

Faith keeping in Zero Gravity

And now, a booklet with rules for proper conduct during Ramadan for Moslem astranauts in space! Moslems are required to pray five times a day. Why five times? According to the Islamic texts, Prophet Mohammed flew (on a donkey like animal)from Mecca to Jerusalem and from there ascended to heaven. He was escorted by Moses through seven heavens into the presence of God. There, at Moses instigation, Muhammad pleaded with God to reduce the number of daily mandatory prayers from fifty to five!

Theoretically a Muslim would have to pray 80 times a day while staying in the space station as it circles the earth 16 times a day.But the guidelines have laid down that the astronaut need only pray five times a day, just as on Earth, and that the times should follow the location where the spacecraft blasted off from - in this case, Baikonur,in Russia.

More on these absurd rules here.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Mmmm...Interesting views...Beautiful blog

Eternalsoul said...

Thank you Freddy and welcome to my blog.