Ramadan from my window
4 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Friday, October 5 at Friday, October 05, 2007.
Waking up to the sound of this going on below you is one of the many, many only-in-Cairo stimuli that makes me so happy to be here. Just....wow...
Pardon my non-Ramadany language, but that's fuckin cool. I've yet to find that spirit here in kuala lumpur.
Correction: the 'Arabist'>>>>>
on the blog roll is not an Egyptian blog, the owner is actually Moroccan.
www.arabist/arabawy is by an Egyptian journalist.
That's actually a very interesting picture. Good Catch, since according to the principle of praying in Islam, everyone has to face Makkah. Now, if you look at the pic, the people in the front are standing at a considerably different angle from those in back. Hmm..
This is not uncommon in Islamic prayer--nor is it untolerated. Islam allows for minor (loosely defined) discrepancies of praying angles, not just to make things simpler for the worshippers who would otherwise have to pray right in the centre of the street, but also because--from a strictly geometrical point of view, two people could be standing at two largely different angles that both face the southeast, for instance, and still manage to be facing the same destination (Mekka) when it's thousands of kilometers away. Don't you think?