Is space travel possible for Abrahamic religions?

January 20, 2025 by Joshua
in Nature

I was thinking about how some religions suggest people to pray facing east, Jerusalem, or Mecca. Quoting Wikipedia, “Prayer in a certain direction is characteristic of many world religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Bahá’í Faith.”

I couldn’t help pursue the question.

What happens if you’re on Mars? How would you figure out the direction to one of these places from Mars? What if we achieved interstellar travel? How could someone figure out how to pray?

If you have to pray and can’t figure out what direction to face from a place, should you not go to that place?

I thought I was exploring a frontier, but it turns out people have considered this question. According to a different Wikipedia article:

The International Space Station (ISS) orbits the Earth at high speed—the direction from it to Mecca changes significantly within a few seconds. Before his flight to the ISS, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor requested, and the Malaysian National Fatwa Council provided, guidelines which have been translated into multiple languages. The council wrote that the qibla determination should be “based on what is possible” and recommended four options, saying that one should pray toward the first option if possible and, if not, fall back successively on the later ones:

  1. the Kaaba itself
  2. the position directly above the Kaaba at the altitude of the astronaut’s orbit
  3. the Earth in general
  4. “wherever”

In line with the fatwa council, other Muslim scholars argue for the importance of flexibility and adapting the qibla requirement to what an astronaut is capable of fulfilling. Khaleel Muhammad of San Diego State University opined “God does not take a person to task for that which is beyond his/her ability to work with.” Kamal Abdali argued that concentration during a prayer is more important than the exact orientation, and he suggested keeping the qibla direction at the start of a prayer instead of “worrying about possible changes in position”. Before Sheikh Muszaphar’s mission, at least eight Muslims had flown to space, but none of them publicly discussed issues relating to worship in space.

People worked on this question. Who would have guessed?

Still, it seems like a cop-out to say “God does not take a person to task for that which is beyond his/her ability to work with.” An omniscient god would have known about this outcome. It’s not like any holy books could have been written by people claiming they were divinely written or inspired. In any case, there seems to be no clear way to determine the right direction, almost as if the books were written by non-omniscient people.

Also, as much as people have thought about finding directions from earth’s orbit, many people think we can colonize the whole galaxy, which would put people a lot farther than earth’s orbit. If we do, how on earth could people not on earth find earth? What about relativity? Would someone light-years away from earth face toward where they think it is now or where it was light years before?

Apparently there’s been plenty of practice of Religion in space.

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