Re: space colonization and religion
Definitely an off shoot of a thread which was an off shoot of another thread
This was so far fetched few decades ago that Molvies would hush you away for asking such "ridiculous: question, but its so real now that many of us will see it happening in our life time.
If tomorrow we have to leave this planet, and colonize mars - or lets say that amongst the volunteers who agreed to go and live at mars for their whole life, some of them happened to be Muslims; how will they perform their rituals?
Namaz, is ok, as its timings depend upon the sunrise and sunset, and Mars’ day is only 40 minutes longer than earth’s day.
Fasting will be challenging. Mars’s year is 2 times the length of earth, also there is no moon. Our Islamic calendar follows lunar cycles and have 12 months. How will we calculate the end and the beginning of any Islamic month, and how many months there will be?
Zakat will be gone, as its conditional, plus money may not be an object at mars.
Hajj is definitely out of the picture.
and this is just Mars. More outbound you go, more challenging, in fact impossible it will become to follow the religion. - and please dont say that you will follow the earth’s calendar/timings. What if there is no earth left, or there is no way of communicating to earth is there.
More and more I think, more confusing the concept of religion gets. I am not challenging religion, its just that I am running out of answers.
Some Rituals ware fardh only when practical like hajj.
Plus, religion is not only rituals, so if it is not practical we may leave all ibadaat and may be we will be judged based on other aamal, applying deen as far as possible is what is desired. (aamal will be weighted not counted). So for me it will still be possible for me to follow deen.