Prostrate yourselves not to the sun nor to the moon, but prostrate yourselves to Allah Who created them, if you (really) worship Him” (The Quran, Fussilat 41:37)
But then what happens when you’re in space where there’s no ground, and the sun and the moon are constantly moving relative to where you are?
To make matters even more complicated, when you’re on the space station you’re orbiting the earth every 90 minutes, meaning there are about 16 sunrises in 24 hours. Do you then pray more frequently to follow the Quran’s prescription?
These are the questions that the Muslim community faced back in 2007 when Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, the first Muslim astronaut, went to space.
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Very often, our beliefs are underpinned by assumptions that we make about how things work. Needless to say, ancient astrological assumptions are vastly different from what we know today.
Logically this means our beliefs should also change to match our new understanding of reality. But no, it’s hard changing what we believe in because it comes at a great social cost.
So we rather warp or even ignore our new understanding of reality so that we can maintain our beliefs, and in so doing, remain in the inner-circle of ‘people like us.’
