Atleast animals do what they are supposed to.

http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals

Please let me know where did I make a mistake in the above reasoning;

The mistake comes from assuming that there are only 2 options - either it is 100% day, or it is 100% night. The way I understand it is that there are 3 options - it is 100% day, it is 100% night, or it is simultaneously both day and night.

I'll illustrate this with a simple day, beginning at dawn.

When the white thread of dawn becomes visible a few hours before sunrise, day has begun. At this point (during dawn), night has not yet ended, so it is simultaneously both day and night.

Once the sun rises, night ends and it is now 100% day.

In the evening, as soon as the sun sets, night begins. However, as the light is still visible, day has not yet ended (it is now dusk). It is simultaneously both day and night.

A few hours later, the white thread is no longer visible, and day ends. It is now 100% night.

Now, on to the subject of fasting. We are told we should fast from the beginning of day. This is at the start of dawn, when the first white thread of light is visible a few hours before sunrise. We then continue to fast until the night starts. As I described above, night starts as soon as the sun sets. Even though day has not yet ended, we can now end our fast because night has started.

So, we fast from dawn until sunset - from the start of day until the start of night.

I'm not sure if this can be called the full moon of "scorching heat", though.

turkey is too large for 4 persons

Not if I'm one of the four people! ;D I love Christmas dinner eat

Pheasant is tastier, though, but I'm more of a goose man myself.

I must say, this is the first time I've seen these 2 words together - 'devout atheist'.

Well atheism is a religion in my opinion, despite what atheists (mainly Richard Dawkins) often say.

It's more than just not believing in a god, they believe there is no god.

Only agnostics can say they don't believe there is a god. They can also say they don't believe there isn't a god.

I'm not exactly new. I've been here for a year and a half but have never bothered posting before.

My personal favourite is the translation by M.A.S.Abdel Haleem ( http//tinyurl.com/2hjdkb ). It uses everyday English and is very easy to read and understand.

when is the dawn prayer meant to be exactly? as the sun rises? just before it does? i have a little timetable and it has "fajr" as one time and "sunrise" as another?!?! how confusing!! any help?

The prayer times aren't a fixed single point, they're a period with a start and an end. With the exception of the dawn prayer, the end time is the start of the next prayer. This is why most timetables have 6 times on them - the 5 start times, plus sunrise. The prayer can be done at any point within each period providing you start after the start time and end before the end time. Assuming you're following the "traditional" prayers and are using a timetable, the periods are

Dawn prayer (fajr) - begins at "fajr", ends at sunrise
Noon prayer (zohar) - begins at "zohar", ends at "asar"
Afternoon prayer (asar) - begins at "asar", ends at "maghrib"
Evening prayer (maghrib) - begins at "maghrib", ends at "isha"
Night prayer (isha) - begins at "isha", ends at "fajr"

Hi everyone,

I've been here for well over a year now, so it's probably about time for me to introduce myself, and to explain a bit about my journey and how I got here. When I wrote all this down it ended up a lot longer than I intended, but I've decided to post it anyway.

I'm from the UK (England). My dad is a very devout atheist and my mum's a Christian. I was brought up by my mum as a Christian. I went to church every week, went to a Church of England school with a very strict entry policy, and was very much a Christian.

As I grew up, though, and started to think for myself, there was something about it that just didn't feel right. Since I knew nothing other than Christianity, I assumed that this feeling that something wasn't right meant that I didn't believe in God. At the age of about 13 I decided I was an Atheist. Despite calling myself an Atheist, I still prayed to God, still talked to Him, etc (privately, to myself, of course). It never even occurred to me that this meant I still believed in God! I stayed an "Atheist" for years, until after I'd been to uni.

Then in 2000 I met a Turkish Girl, who is now my wife. I started dipping in and out of the Qur'an, but never read it in any depth until 2005 when I spent a few weeks reading it from cover to cover. There was nothing at all in it that I disagreed with. It completely described how I'd always felt. It was at that point that I realised my "Atheism" wasn't because I no longer believed in God - I did. It was because I didn't agree that Jesus was God. That's the bit of Christianity that never felt right to me. It dawned on me that I could still believe in God without believing in Jesus.

Since then I've read several different translations of the Qur'an and it just confirmed the view that I believe what it says. It described everything perfectly. As I read more, I grew to believe that it was the word of God.

However, what I read didn't agree with what I saw. There were none of the rules that I associated with Islam. Women weren't second class citizens who were forced to hide behind a burkha. There was no stoning, no praising Muhammed at every opportunity, no terrorism, no "honour killings", nothing. I couldn't understand how this wonderful book was related to the Islam I'd seen on the news. So I started reading as much as I could. I found out about Hadiths and Sunnah, and even started to follow a few of them like how to pray, but these felt just as wrong to me as Christianity. It wasn't what I'd come to love in the Qur'an.

Then I had yet another revelation. I'm a mathematician and a scientist. I love order and logic. I could see quite clearly that there were only two choices available to me, and followed them through. They are

a) The Qur'an is correct (and is, therefore, from God).
b) The Qur'an is not correct (either it is not from God or there are errors in it).

If I believe a) then I must accept what the Qur'an says on a subject above any other source. The Qur'an says that it is complete and fully detailed, so I must accept this. Since the Qur'an is complete and fully detailed it does not need anything to explain it or elaborate on any points in it (for if it did then it can't be complete). If that is the case then the Qur'an alone is all that is needed.

If I believe b) then I do not accept what the Qur'an says. If I don't accept what the Qur'an says, then why would I need to follow any of the rules in it, and why would I care if it was explained by Hadith or not?

Either way, I couldn't see why Hadiths were needed. I chose to accept a), and I felt happy in my beliefs for the first time in my life. They felt right to me.

So that's how I came to believe in God alone. I'll post my interpretations of the Qur'an in a bit, but this is already far too long and it's now very late!