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UAE Clerics' Fatwa Forbids Muslims From Traveling To Mars
PolygamousRanchKid writes "The Khaleej Times of Dubai reports that a fatwa committee has forbidden Muslims from taking a one-way trip to the Red Planet. At the moment, there is no technology available that would allow for a return trip from Mars, so it is truly a one-way ticket for the colonists, who may also become reality TV stars in the process. The committee of the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment in the United Arab Emirates that issued the fatwa against such a journey doesn't have anything against space exploration, Elon Musk's Mars visions, or anything like that. Rather, the religious leaders argue that making the trip would be tantamount to committing suicide, which all religions tend to frown upon."
You don't want to go to Mars? Please by all means, keep your bullshit on Earth and let us evolved human beings make a fresh new life on a fresh new planet without you!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Cue witty jokes about blowing oneself up not counting as suicide.
But they should also forbid being born, as everyone that does will die eventually.
"the trip would be tantamount to committing suicide, which all religions tend to frown upon."
Hey get your Judeocentric religious world views out of here! Buddhism goes so far as to feature a story of the Buddha himself committing suicide just to feed some hungry tiger cubs.
Which is insane like all religions, but I reserve the right for their insanity to be characterized accurately!
.. Fatwa
Stop blasting yourself into pieces, it's forbidden,
and no your chance to survive is below the mars mission.
I can't see many religious people lining up for an expedition to discover if life evolved on another planet. They still don't believe that it evolved on this one.
After all, Tobacco leads to the premature death of most people who use it.
I always thought of suicide as the act of killing yourself just for the sake of killing yourself. While one might call something a "suicide mission", that is not the same as suicide, is it? If a soldier stays behind to man a turret in the face of certain death to provide covering fire so his comrades can escape, is he committing suicide?
It does sound pretty flimsy as an argument. But keep in mind that current one-way plans to go to Mars really haven't even gotten to the Power Point stage yet. They don't really have a lot of incentive to burn brain power on this. I suspect this is a nice way to say, "please don't fall for these scams".
I think there's translation issues, but what it amounts to is that the proposed mars journey is not only effectively one way, they're also not hauling enough supplies for you to live the rest of your life.
So rather than living to ~70 or so minimum, assuming no accident takes you out earlier, you're going on a trip with no real scientific value other than studying how you end up croaking, where your life on mars maxes out at around 3-5 years* from lift-off. You're not fighting a war, you're not dying to save others, etc...
Would the Fatwa have been issued if the proposal was 'The plan is to visit mars and come back, but we figure the odds are 50-50 that something will happen that we can't make it back, but in return we'll collect all this information that may help explorers in the future'? Maybe, maybe not. There's plenty of hazardous expeditions that Muslims have gone on without having a Fatwa issued against it - scaling Mount Everest, visiting the South/North pole, etc...
*From what I've seen of the proposal.
I don't read AC A human right
There's plenty of hazardous expeditions that Muslims have gone on without having a Fatwa issued against it - scaling Mount Everest, visiting the South/North pole, etc.
And the ISS, if I remember correctly. There were some issues in determining the direction in which to pray, but those were resolved. Wonder how that would work for Martian Muslims, though.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
the religious leaders argue that making the trip would be tantamount to committing suicide, which all religions tend to frown upon."
Brought to you by the religion that also endorses suicide bombers, because some suicides are actually ok.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
What if there's a school on Mars that has a girl in it? It's not going to blow itself up now, is it?!?! More short-sightedness from the 'clerics'.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
But the fact that 99.9% of Muslims oppose terrorism doesn't seem to be swaying the terrorists.
Quotation needed. I think that you are considerably underestimating amount of 'angry Muslims' in the world.
If you would say 99.9% of Muslims aren't _actively_ involved in terrorism - sure. But oppose?
Because, again, religions aren't hive minds. Members don't really have much influence over each other, and they have even less influence over people who have already proven themselves willing to kill.
Now, this is pure BS. Religions are closest thing people have to hive minds (I count cults of dictators, like in NK, as a religion, even if it is not using world 'god'). Religons influence minds of people in extreme ways. Think about Scientists or other strange cults/sects - this is example of religion completely brainwashing the person. Bigger religions are trying to be slightly more subtle, but still, religion is probably best mind manipulation tool ever invented by mankind.
I think that the idea is that while visiting the ISS is 'hazardous', there's a lot of hazardous things out there, the religion doesn't forbid hazardous. What it forbids is outright suicide. Join an expedition to reach the top of Everest without a plan to return? That's suicide. Riding a russian rocket up to the ISS? Let's call it a 1% chance of death. Dangerous, but not suicide. For that matter, sacrificing yourself for others (war, evacuation and such) isn't considered suicide either, even if death is certain.
As for the Martian Muslims, it depends on which sect they belong to - the simplistic method is simply to pray facing the Earth, but there's something forbidding praying towards the sun(so when Mars and the Earth are on opposite sides...). Then there's the fact that they don't actually use a straight line calculation, they use the shortest route, which means using a circle route on earth... Alaskan Muslims pray pretty much straight north because of that. Also means that you have an actual direction rather than 'into the ground' while on the opposite side of the planet. But when on mars it'd likely be the retrograde orbit to reach Earth.
Assuming significant colonization of mars by practicing Muslims, I wouldn't be surprised if some leader there just declares a 'Spiritual Martian Mecca' on Mars for them to face when praying.
Oh, and there's the clarification that if you're spending more worry about which direction to pray in than the prayer itself, you're doing it wrong and that there's an 'any' option in that case. Oh, and you shouldn't change facing during the prayer, even if Mecca is going to pull a 180(start facing towards, end facing away) during that time. Figure out the direction in an expedient fashion(computers are allowed) and pray.
I don't read AC A human right
So when these atheist dictators banned religion and went around killing those who practiced it, that was just ONE BIG COINCIDENCE and had nothing to do with their atheism?
dictator
1. a person exercising absolute power, especially a ruler who has absolute, unrestricted control in a government without hereditary succession.
How can you have absolute power when people follow religious leaders, not you? And that claim to answer to a higher authority than you? Dictators suppress and eradicate religion because it's a threat to their power, it's in the nature of a dictator not an atheist. Sharing a religion means you are both working for the same god, you might disagree on the ways and means and goals but you're in it together. Branding it as ateists makes it sounds like we're your equal and opposite, but it's not. If two people go skydiving, they have something in common. If two people don't go skydiving, they still have nothing in common.
But the fact that 99.9% of Muslims oppose terrorism doesn't seem to be swaying the terrorists.
Are you lying or just ignorant? Here's an example from a huge study showing that just in Bangladesh is 150 million * 90% muslim * 26% = 35.2 million who think suicide bombing of civilians is sometimes/often justified. In Egypt there is another 85 million * 90% muslim * 29% = 22.2 million people and the same in Pakistan with 180 million * 97% muslim * 13% = 22.7 million. Together that's over 80 million people or about 5% of muslims that DO support terrorism. And a majority of the population in Egypt, Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine and Malaysia want to kill you for leaving Islam.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The problem is they did read the Koran. It says non believers should be killed. Quite explicitly. Since it is supposed to be god's literal word many scholars have concluded that jihad is pleasing to him. Therefore death as a result of fighting in his name is fine, to be encouraged even.
Suicide bombing is more contentious, but only in the senses that some people argue against the legitimacy of the war and some argue that it isn't the best way to fight.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The Malaysian National Space Agency (MNSA) and its Department of Islamic Development held a two-day conference in April [of 2006]. They invited 150 scholars, scientists, and astronauts to discuss "Islam and Life in Space."
Five times a day (before sunrise, at midday, in late afternoon, after sunset, and at night), earth-bound muezzins call Muslims to prayer. A spaceship traveling 17,400 miles per hour orbits the earth 16 times in a day. Does that mean praying 80 times in 24 hours?
If interrupting work to pray is not possible, the astronaut may practice a shorter version of the prayer or combine midday and afternoon prayer times, or the evening and night ones.
The next problem: Where is Mecca?
Muslims on Earth face Mecca, in central Saudi Arabia, when they pray. The MNSA suggests that the astronaut pray toward Mecca as much as possible, or at the Earth in general. But if it becomes necessary, the astronaut may simply face any direction.
How does an Islamic astronaut face Mecca in orbit?
The conference went on to discuss a broad range of concerns. To sum up: The rituals of the Islamic faith are meant to focus the believer's attention on his relationship with his God. They are not an exercise in puzzle-logic and they do not require a geometric or technological solution.
Moving on.
In January 2014, former German astronaut Ulrich Walter strongly criticized the project for ethical reasons. Speaking with Berlin's Tagesspiegel, he estimated the probability of reaching Mars alive at only thirty percent, and that of surviving there more than three months at less than twenty percent. He said, "They make their money with that [TV] show. They don't care what happens to those people in space...
Mars One
Captain John Smith ran a tight ship and had no use for the Virginian colonist whose plans were based on magical thinking and not careful planning, adequate material and financial resources and a rigorous internal discipline.
He published a list of supplies he believed to be the minimum requirements for survival on the frontier: essentially a year's supply of all consumables and durable goods, and allowing for a generous margin of safety.
New France saw one or two supply ships a year, which may give you some idea of the expense. New France, remember, had an economically viable export trade in furs and unflinching support from the crown. Those ships would be coming, hell or high water. Other colonies were less favored.
Smith's budget has no allowance for a healthy communal and social life. Entertainment, education, religion and so on.
No successful American colonial settlement ever began with a base as small as twenty or bound to a space that is at once so physically confined and isolated. I would expect to see alcohol as a problem. I would expect to see suicide as a problem.