{"id":186,"date":"2007-09-20T15:55:48","date_gmt":"2007-09-20T15:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2007\/09\/malaysian-astronaut-grapples-w.php"},"modified":"2007-09-20T15:55:48","modified_gmt":"2007-09-20T15:55:48","slug":"malaysian-astronaut-grapples-w","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/malaysian-astronaut-grapples-w","title":{"rendered":"Malaysian Astronaut Grapples with Prayer Ritual"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Associated Press <\/strong><br \/>\nStar City, Russia &#8211; Among the things Malaysia&#8217;s first astronaut will be worrying about next month: how does an observant Muslim pray toward Mecca while soaring hundreds of miles (kilometers) above the Earth?<br \/>\nSheikh Muszaphar Shukor, 35, is one of three people who will blast off aboard a Russian-built Soyuz space craft next month en route to the international space station. Shukor &#8211; along with Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson &#8211; was officially approved for his mission Thursday by a Russian space flight commission.<br \/>\nThey blast off from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Oct. 10.<br \/>\nSpeaking at a news conference at Russia&#8217;s cosmonaut training center at Star City, on Moscow&#8217;s outskirts, Shukor said during his 10 days in space, he hoped to perform life science and other research, but said also he would not ignore the responsibilities of his faith while soaring some 220 miles (350 kilometers) up.<br \/>\n&#8220;I do agree, that I am a Muslim, I am Islamic, but my main priority is more of conducting experiments,&#8221; he said.<br \/>\n&#8220;As a Muslim, I do hope to do my responsibilities, I do hope to fast in space,&#8221; he said.<br \/>\nAfter months of discussion and two international conferences, the Islamic National Fatwa Council came up with guidelines as to how Muslim astronauts should observe daily rituals. The rules were published in 12-page booklet titled &#8220;Muslim Obligations in the International Space Station.&#8221;<br \/>\nObservant Muslims are required to turn toward Mecca &#8211; located in Saudi Arabia &#8211; and kneel and pray five times a day. However, with the space station circling the Earth 16 times a day, washing one&#8217;s face and hands, and kneeling in zero gravity to pray &#8211; or facing toward Mecca for that matter &#8211; makes fulfilling those religious obligations more difficult.<br \/>\nMalaysia&#8217;s National Fatwa Council ruled that Muslim astronauts will not be required to kneel to pray if the absence of gravity makes it too hard, nor will they have to wash with water &#8211; a simple wet towel will do.<br \/>\nFacing Mecca while praying will be left to the &#8220;best abilities&#8221; of the astronaut, the council said.<br \/>\nAdding to the difficulties is the fact that the launch coincides with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan &#8211; when Muslims are expected to fast from dawn until dusk. The fatwa decided the fasting may be postponed until returning to Earth.<br \/>\nOther exceptions include allowing simple silent prayer if performing physical rituals would be impossible.<br \/>\nShukor will return to earth Oct. 20 along with two members of the station&#8217;s current crew &#8211; cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov.<br \/>\nMalenchenko and Whitson will remain aboard and be joined later in the month by astronaut Daniel Tani, arriving with the next U.S. shuttle Discovery.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Associated Press Star City, Russia &#8211; Among the things Malaysia&#8217;s first astronaut will be worrying about next month: how does an observant Muslim pray toward Mecca while soaring hundreds of miles (kilometers) above the Earth? Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, 35, is one of three people who will blast off aboard a Russian-built Soyuz space craft next&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Malaysian Astronaut Grapples with Prayer Ritual<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/malaysian-astronaut-grapples-w\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Malaysian Astronaut Grapples with Prayer Ritual\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Associated Press Star City, Russia &#8211; Among the things Malaysia&#8217;s first astronaut will be worrying about next month: how does an observant Muslim pray toward Mecca while soaring hundreds of miles (kilometers) above the Earth? Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, 35, is one of three people who will blast off aboard a Russian-built Soyuz space craft next&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/malaysian-astronaut-grapples-w\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-09-20T15:55:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"akornfeld\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Malaysian Astronaut Grapples with Prayer Ritual","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/malaysian-astronaut-grapples-w","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Malaysian Astronaut Grapples with Prayer Ritual","og_description":"Associated Press Star City, Russia &#8211; Among the things Malaysia&#8217;s first astronaut will be worrying about next month: how does an observant Muslim pray toward Mecca while soaring hundreds of miles (kilometers) above the Earth? Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, 35, is one of three people who will blast off aboard a Russian-built Soyuz space craft next&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/malaysian-astronaut-grapples-w","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2007-09-20T15:55:48+00:00","author":"akornfeld","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/malaysian-astronaut-grapples-w","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/malaysian-astronaut-grapples-w","name":"Malaysian Astronaut Grapples with Prayer Ritual","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-09-20T15:55:48+00:00","dateModified":"2007-09-20T15:55:48+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/da3acea0a48aaeb7e77474c2f29f849a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/malaysian-astronaut-grapples-w#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/malaysian-astronaut-grapples-w"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/malaysian-astronaut-grapples-w#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Malaysian Astronaut Grapples with Prayer Ritual"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/da3acea0a48aaeb7e77474c2f29f849a","name":"akornfeld","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dd2\/dd26f111fd1fab06b546769e3bf834f3x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dd2\/dd26f111fd1fab06b546769e3bf834f3x96.jpg","caption":"akornfeld"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/akornfeld"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}