If you face a specific direction when you do salat... - read this
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If you face the Kabbah in Mecca for example, you can use the following method to work out how far off you are actually from it...
Type in here and Mecca
http//distancecalculator.globefeed.com/World_Distance_Calculator.aspIt will give you the distance in miles or kilometres.
Then go to
http//www.visualtrig.comAnd type in the number of miles or kilometres in the box at the bottom of the triangle. In the green box to the right, type in 1. Then click .
This will work out how many miles/km you are off from Mecca for each degree out. This number is shown in the box on the left.
For example London UK to Mecca
Distance 4793km
Calculation for every 1 degree out, you would be 83.7km off
So if a person is in London, and Mecca is 119 degrees from North, if they face 120 degrees, they would be 83.7km off from their target.Please post your results here
Location
number of kilometres off per degree -
While away from Masjidul Haraam, we do not confront Ka'aba, on the contrary, we are asked to confront the said Masjid whose boundaries extend to 15 miles short of Madina Munawarra and include whole of Mecca. We do not face "directions" as focal point/Qiblata as is done by Jews and Christians.
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...whose boundaries extend to 15 miles short of Madina Munawarra and include whole of Mecca...
Can you cite which verse in The Quran this is from?
My question is rhetorical, as I know you cannot cite this. But for sake of argument, let's say that is true
- You reside in Pakistan, so for example, from Lahore to Mecca, for every degree off you are out by 62.8km.
- once within the boundaries you speak of, can one face in any direction or a specific one?
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It is interesting seeing it in figures isn't it.
The obvious question then becomes if the vast majority will not actually be facing the Kabbah, and it is very difficult to get right, is this something God would command? Is there something else going on? etc.
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Can you cite which verse in The Quran this is from?
Peace Wakas,
My question is rhetorical, as I know you cannot cite this. But for sake of argument, let's say that is true
- You reside in Pakistan, so for example, from Lahore to Mecca, for every degree off you are out by 62.8km.
- once within the boundaries you speak of, can one face in any direction or a specific one?
Allah swt, the all knowledgable, also knew about such gimmicks, for which reason, He also mentioned the reason for the direction of confronting Masjid al Haram while away from it, in whatever direction and location.
http//www.haqeeqat.org.pk/English%20Tafsir%20e%20Haqeeqat/00.Arabic%20Text/temp%2002%20%202.150d%7Bwhatever%20direction].gif
And from whatever direction you left the Sacred Mosque,, thereafter for reason of being outside/away, turn face to face the Sacred Mosque;http//www.haqeeqat.org.pk/English%20Tafsir%20e%20Haqeeqat/00.Arabic%20Text/002.108.gif
and you the believers also whatever direction you leave the place, thereafter for reason of being outside/away, you turn yourselves face to face the Sacred Mosquehttp//www.haqeeqat.org.pk/English%20Tafsir%20e%20Haqeeqat/00.Arabic%20Text/002.109.gif
so that for people no argument/counter reason/ accusation lies against you people,
http//www.haqeeqat.org.pk/English%20Tafsir%20e%20Haqeeqat/00.Arabic%20Text/temp%2002%20%202.150c%7Bexcept%20those%20who%20slander].gif
except from amongst them those who slander/irrationally conduct.2142-152
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Peace,
All this is fine.
I am in Johannesburg, South Africa. It is a physical impossibility for me to face the kaabah in most of the traditional postures attributed to the salat (I will be facing some point in space). In fact the only time I will face the kaabah are some specific moments when I would be moving from one physical position to another. So it is quite tricky trying top figure out at which point exactly I will be complying with the qiblah instruction in the Quran if viewed from that kind of interpretation. Then there is, as Wakas has demonstrated, trying to calculate the direction, even if I ignore the physical impossibilty of such an interpretation. I may need to consider shifts in the earth's crust, plates, etc.
By the time I do all this, I fear the time for that salat may have passed. I may be at the next salat "time". If none of the variables have changed since starting my calculations, I may be able to perform the salat facing the kaabah. But wait! It is physically impossible.
I don't know what to do, I'm confused. So I take out the Quran and look for the truth represented by the pure message of revelation rather than adulterated ideas in the heads of people or following some ancestral tradition or moving words from their places taking the signs of God in isolation without looking at the structure, context, Quranic usage of the signs, etc.
Let's allow reason to prevail when we understand the Quran, then come together and discuss it without deciding what something means before we investigate it.
Imraan
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peace Mazhar,
Where do you get this from (see underlined)
and you the believers also whatever direction you leave the place, thereafter for reason of being outside/away, you turn yourselves face to face the Sacred MosquePlease clarify exactly.
Thanks.
The principle sentence is
And the following sentence begins with Appositive particle "Waw" linking the sentence in all respects to the earlier sentence;
is adverb of location/place and is relating to fronted elided predicate for the verb which has suffixed pronoun as noun/subject of verb Kana.
"being outside/away" is built in , since it is used when there is perception of distanced away, and is additionally and evidently also depicted by the verb , meaning when you have moved out of said Masjid.
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Salaaman Wakas,
If you face the Kabbah in Mecca for example, you can use the following method to work out how far off you are actually from it...
Type in here and Mecca
http//distancecalculator.globefeed.com/World_Distance_Calculator.aspIt will give you the distance in miles or kilometres.
Then go to
http//www.visualtrig.comAnd type in the number of miles or kilometres in the box at the bottom of the triangle. In the green box to the right, type in 1. Then click .
This will work out how many miles/km you are off from Mecca for each degree out. This number is shown in the box on the left.
For example London UK to Mecca
Distance 4793km
Calculation for every 1 degree out, you would be 83.7km off
So if a person is in London, and Mecca is 119 degrees from North, if they face 120 degrees, they would be 83.7km off from their target.Please post your results here
Location
number of kilometres off per degree
)Did Allah know this? >
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Salaam Mazhar,
http//www.haqeeqat.org.pk/English%20Tafsir%20e%20Haqeeqat/00.Arabic%20Text/002.109.gif
so that for people no argument/counter reason/ accusation lies against you people,
2144
What exactly does this mean?
Is this really possible? &
Lets say, AlMasjid-AlHaraam is on west and I have to goto south or north or east to my business place. How can I?As Allah is aware of everything, we must be not understanding it correctly. What do you think?
May Allah guide us all towards the correct path.
Mohammed M. Khan -
Thanks for clarifying, however I find your translation odd, convoluted and I'm not even sure it makes sense. Please translate this part in 2149
Wamin haythu kharajta fawalliwajhaka shatra almasjidi alharam
Thanks.
First sentence of 2149 and 2150 are exactly identical.
If you find translation as odd or convoluted, the better option is to try to understand the sentence by grammatically parsing the structure of the sentence which might make the perception significantly vivid.
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peace Mazhar,
I assume therefore you translate
Wamin haythu kharajta fawalliwajhaka shatra almasjidi alharam
as
And from whatever direction you leave the place, thereafter for reason of being outside/away, you turn yourself face to face the Sacred Mosque
It is no surprise to me, that no translator I have read translates it as you do, and the above seems to distort the sequence of the words. Not to mention the logic is questionable.
I am happy to leave our discussion there until someone who knows Arabic actually verifies what you said is possible.
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Here's mine!
Location Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
Distance 1188.9 km (or 1189km)
For every one degree I would be 20km off.I was expecting that, no matter how close I would be to Mecca I wouldn't be right on the dot, let alone facing the Ka'ba exactly on point. Great and interesting find!
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It is interesting seeing it in figures isn't it.
The obvious question then becomes if the vast majority will not actually be facing the Kabbah, and it is very difficult to get right, is this something God would command? Is there something else going on? etc.
Very good point. But I thought Qibla was toward Bersheeba. But the Quran also says it was a trial and it downplayed its significance in verse 2.179
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The obvious question then becomes if the vast majority will not actually be facing the Kabbah, and it is very difficult to get right, is this something God would command? Is there something else going on? etc.
Salaam
This is slightly off topic, but I just wanted to point out that this isn't a very strong argument. In pondering the infamous 434, I often wonder the exact same thing. If the vast majority of people will misunderstand this verse and fail to adhere to it, and the word 'idrab' is very close in meaning to another word, then why would God not make it absolutely clear? You have ignored these questions in the case of 434, but in this case you stand by the 'argument from mass failure to adhere.'
By the way, if you haven't seen this video by Hamza Yusuf about this verse, then you should watch it. I watched the entire thing expecting him to end up with the same conclusion you do in quran434.com. I respect Hamza a lot, and find it intellectually ...itchy...that his argument lies on the premise that dharb means to tap. I don't see how 'tapping' at the end is going to resolve the couple's differences and end the dispute.
What are your impressions of that video?
In an effort to be useful to the topic at hand, I'll respond to this as well
I am happy to leave our discussion there until someone who knows Arabic actually verifies what you said is possible.
I shall read it as one passage
I'll admit I have never seen Mazhar's rendition of this before. The verse right before it (214 states
To me, this statement matters most to this discussion. It says (my own translation)
And to everyone is a direction that HE is its turner (to himself). So race in good deeds! Wherever you are, God comes with you all together
If the people turn to it, it would say "likullin wijhatun huwa yatawallaahaa"
If the people are turned by it, it would say "likullin wijhatun huwa mutawalleehaa"So interestingly, doing good deeds is mirrored with everyone having a random place to turn to. "Everyone has a place they turn to, which is still facing Me. So do good deeds!"
This is interesting in itself, however the key here is the second part "ayna maa takoonoo" - it is translated everywhere as "wherever you are" or "wherever you may be"
2 Verses later it reads "7aythu maa kuntum" - it is also translated as "wherever you are" or "wherever you may be"
They are both correct. I would perhaps translate the first as 'wherever you are' and the second as 'wherever you may be'.
But I can honestly not tell the semantic difference between having 'ayna takoonoo' and 'haythu takoonoo'. What is the reasoning for the change from ayna to haythu? Does haythu only work with that tense??I find the use of sha6ra to be interesting, and it probably deserves its own full discussion. I'll avoid bringing that up for now.
So I see Mazhar's argument - that "wa min 7aythu kharajta" refers to the sha6ra. At first I wanted to laugh at it, but the more I look at it the more it works better than traditional translations.
"Min 7aythu kharajta" doesn't give the meaning of direction. It literally means "from wherever you leave". The translators have all translated kharajta to mean "come forth", which I feel is an odd translation. In today's arabic, if you say 'kharajta' it invariably means i left/departed/went
You wouldn't even say "I kharajt to the store". You would say "I ro7t to the store". If you really wanted to use kharajta you'd mostly use it as "kharajt min" or "kharajt 3an"
Anyway so I don't feel that using kharajta here is an accident. It means to leave.
So what are we leaving? And why does it say in the previous verse "wherever you are God comes with you all"?
So I have to conclude that Mazhar's interpretation is very possible. Sha6ra can mean 'direction of the masjid', or 'a part of the masjid' or 'to the center of the masjid'. So it does seem plausible, and the verses would say
you = singular
YOU = pluralAnd to everyone is a direction that God is its turner (to himself). So race in good deeds! Wherever YOU are, God comes with YOU all together....And from wherever you leave, so turn your face towards the Masjid al-Haraam. And it is of the truth from your Lord...And from wherever you leave, so turn your face towards the Masjid al-Haraam. And wherever YOU may be, so turn YOUR faces towards it. So as not for the people to have an argument agains YOU.
I thought this was a clear-cut verse, but I'm surprised by how dense it is with meaning. I hope backbiting is kept to a minimum so a good discussion can develop.
EDIT
Just noticed that all singular addresses come in the form of "from wherever you leave".
All the plural ones come in the form of "wherever you may be".I don't think the singular ones are talking to Muhammad though. It is very plausible thanks to 2144, but the plural/singular is too interspersed. And why would God say the same thing to Muhammad twice?
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The Kabba is at 21.42254970697866, 39.82621192932129 in lat and long. So we could always anchor a ship and the antipode of the Kabba at -21.42254970697865, -140.1737880706787. Then it wouldn't matter which direction we prayed as all directions are equidistant from the Kabba.
Try it in google if you like.
Just for fun.
JewishDude
peace Salam, Shalom, Peace peace -
The Kabba is at 21.42254970697866, 39.82621192932129 in lat and long. So we could always anchor a ship and the antipode of the Kabba at -21.42254970697865, -140.1737880706787. Then it wouldn't matter which direction we prayed as all directions are equidistant from the Kabba.
Try it in google if you like.
Just for fun.
JewishDude
peace Salam, Shalom, Peace peaceHi
The only problem is that nowhere in the verse it is said "when you pray turn toward smthg" it just says "from wherever you leave" turn toward smthg.
Peace
