Interesting bunch of issues to be discusses.
How can you do wadhu in space? And you can’t do ablution with dirt instead (taummum), because without gravity dirt can’t settle anywhere
Similarly, when in space the sun rises and sets several times each day… how do you time your prayers?
Anyway… good on Malaysia for having the vision to return to combining Islamic study with scientific and technological issues.
A two-day conference on Islam and life in space is under way in Malaysia, in a bid to answer questions faced by would-be Muslim astronauts.
Malaysia is due to send an astronaut into space with the Russians next year.
The country’s first spaceman is almost certain to be a Muslim, which raises a number of practical issues.
For instance, Muslims wash before they pray but not only is water a precious commodity in space, but it is also impractical in weightlessness.
Likewise, the faithful face Mecca. However, that will mean pin-pointing a moving location while in zero gravity.
And Muslim prayer times are linked to those of the sunrise and sunset, but in orbit the sun appears to rise and set more than a dozen times a day.
Malaysia’s science ministry has called together a group of experts to thrash out these and other questions.
It is being billed as the first-ever serious discussion of the issues.
It is in keeping with the Malaysian government’s mission to promote what it calls Islam Hadhari, or civilisational Islam, which encourages Muslims to embrace education, science and technology.
It will doubtless be hoping that a conference of Muslim scientists and scholars debating such cutting edge issues will not go unnoticed in the rest of the Islamic world.