http://www.daviddegner.com A sketchbook that's probably not worth reading Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:48:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 http://www.daviddegner.com/2009/which-direction-do-you-pray/ http://www.daviddegner.com/2009/which-direction-do-you-pray/#comments Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:21:59 +0000 ddegner http://www.daviddegner.com/2009/which-direction-do-you-pray/ Tonight I ran across a interesting religious debate that is occuring in Islam. A major tennant of Islam is to pray towards Mecca 5 times a day. Which starts as a relatively simple commandment.
But tonight while talking to a sufi he enunciated a schism that seperates two sects only by degrees but goes deeper.
Acording to this Sufi traditionally the direction to pray has been based on the cardinal directions and a flat map. So if one is praying towards Mecca from Florida he or she would aim in a east south-east direction.
Wahabis determin their prayer direction with the modern understanding of spheres and the great circle. So like an airliner flying to Mecca they aim north east because it is the shortest route.
This story is based only on two sources and I want to cooberate it more, pin down details, and find some examples.

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