Dear readers! An intriguing and urgent question has been dropped into my inbox!
Would Muslims on Venus only have to pray 5 times every 243 Earth days? Since Venus rotates backwards, would they say the prayers in reverse order? What does this mean for Muslims on Uranus (no anal joke). THE FUTURE OF SPACE EXPLORATION AWAITS YOUR ANSWER WITH BAITED BREATH!
Famed scholars of our planet, how does a Muslim Earthling save xirself the embarrassment of engaging a Muslim Venusian in congregational prayer insensitively timed? Is it appropriate to adapt the Venusian prayer calendar? Upon my scheduled visit to Uranus, should I determine the arrival of Ramadan by the phases of Titania or Cordelia? Is eating Martians halaal?
the fatal feminist 
Nahida, I am DEEPLY OFFENDED that you would categorize the legitimate concerns of real aliens with mythical mermaids.
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I am deeply offended that you would insist my people the merfolk are mythical. Stop it with your erasure!
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I remember reading once that this had been figured out for muslim astronauts. Surely the same solution could be used on Venus as on the Space Shuttle, no? Although I don’t remember what the actual solution was.
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Oh, seriously? Interesting!
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It could not. On the Space Shuttle you don’t go above 500 miles above the ground. You basically are just circumnavigating the world once every 90 minutes. It’s much more complex for living on the surface (or orbit) of other planets, or for interplanetary space (where there is no day-night cycle at all.
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OBVIOUSLY eating Martians is perfectly permissible.
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As Nahida has written a number of times, it’s not very nice to eat sentient beings.
With that taken care of, Venus’s day is longer than its year. If we lived on Venus we would pray less than five times a year. I guess that’s not a big deal though, since the sun doesn’t really matter as much as the moon in Islam.
But Venus has no moons.
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Fun fact*: Venus used to have moons, but one day the Prophet accidentally split them in two when he was in a bad mood, and afterwards he couldn’t find the pieces to put them back together again. When God asked him what had happened, he blamed it on Venus’ low gravity. And that was how the asteroid belt was formed.
*May not be factual.
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lol xD The asteroid belt had once seemed utterly uninteresting and unappealing to me, until the 3rd grade when I learned it was possibly a planet that never formed. Oh how enticing is the romance of a planet never formed!
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But… but the asteroid belt is past Mars. And Venus has almost as much gravity as Earth.
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I assumed that’s why it isn’t factual (and also because the Prophet split Earth’s moon in half, not Venus’s, and put it back together again [though not ’cause he was in a bad mood–people just demanded to see a miracle.])
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Ohh that makes WinterWind’s story make so much more sense now. Wasn’t Mecca originally a center of lunar worship? Is this relevant to that story?
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I don’t know, I haven’t heard that.
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I do think there’s some science fiction that engaged with this issue. I seem to recall a bunch of Muslim astronavigators trying to work out where Earth was so they could pray towards Mecca…
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The Malaysians have a handbook for Muslim astronauts:
http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2011/05/02/god-on-a-space-mission/
It’s intended for use by astronauts while on the ISS and probably doesn’t contain direct answers to the questions posed in this post. But what the heck…:)
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Very useful. Thank you!
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Since the times of prayer are based on visual confirmation of the shape of the sun, I think they could be used off-world fairly easily – the calendar could be re-adapted based on the Venusian day and year, and times marked by sunrise and sunset, same as on Earth.
Incidentally, I once sat an exam in which one of the questions was ‘Does Christianity have anything to offer to a Martian?’ I didn’t answer it in the exam, but talked it through with my tutor later, and actually it turned into a really fascinating question!
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