# A question for Paul in Saudi **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 28, 2004, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-paul-in-saudi/277046 "2004-11-28T22:58:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jeffro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7993a0/32.png) [@Jeffro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeffro)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-paul-in-saudi/277046/1 "2004-11-28T22:58:55Z")
I believe that Muslims are called to prayer three times a day. Could you tell me, 1. How long do these prayer sessions last? 2. What do you do during this time? Are you allowed to go about your business or are you expected to stand still and wait for this to end? Just curious. ---
**Author:** ![Jeffro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7993a0/32.png) [@Jeffro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeffro)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-paul-in-saudi/277046/2 "2004-11-28T23:01:36Z")
Crap, wrong forum! Mods could you move tihis to general questions for me? Thanks ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-paul-in-saudi/277046/3 "2004-11-28T23:04:31Z")
No problem. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-paul-in-saudi/277046/4 "2004-11-28T23:14:30Z")
\*\*Fives \*\*times a day. It’s one of the 5 pillars of (Sunni) Islam. ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-paul-in-saudi/277046/5 "2004-11-29T00:21:17Z")
Huh! I never thought that Paul in Saudi was a Muslim. I just assumed he was a run-of-the-mill American Christian who was working/stationed in Saudi Arabia. ---
**Author:** ![vinniepaz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b4bc9f/32.png) [@vinniepaz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vinniepaz)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-paul-in-saudi/277046/6 "2004-11-29T00:23:15Z")
right… the question is, what does he do when everyone else is praying? I think I read somewhere that the non-Muslims simply do something quiet during this period. ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-paul-in-saudi/277046/7 "2004-11-29T00:30:02Z")
I’m not Paul, and I’m in Qatar, not Saudi. If a muslim is praying in the same room, I just keep quiet out of respect. It only takes three or four minutes. You can just go about your normal business if you feel like it, though. It’s not a big deal. ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-paul-in-saudi/277046/8 "2004-11-29T04:16:37Z")
You’re in Qatar?! I used to live in Qatar, as an English teacher. Are you there for the war? When I was there a few years ago, no one had heard of the place. Now it’s Grand Central Station. There I was thinking I was super cool for living in this country no one had heard of, and events come along and… ah, you get the idea. Saudi should be different than Qatar (and most other Muslim societies in the world) on this count because of the _mutawa_, the religious enforcement police. Apparently they’re real bastards. I’d leave that to Paul, I’m curious as SA is one of the Gulf countries I never did get to. I wasn’t going to take a shot at this til someone mentioned Q-land. Although Qatar’s also Wahhabist, it’s way mellow on issues of what you do publically while others pray in comparison to Saudi AFAIK. In my classes we had a break for prayer time, during which most of the students went outside for a cigarette and the truly religious ones went to the prayer room for about 10 min. total (walk there, pray, walk back). In someone’s house - you’d ikely be in the men’s or women’s _majlis_, the sex-segregated rooms where same-sex visitors visit with family members - there could be prayer and a couple of other things going on at once. I’d just keep a respectful quiet. On TV in Qatar, the most bizarre thing would happen… what my housemates and I called **The Oracle!** In mid-sentence the screen would blank out and be replaced by a green-bordered (green being the Muslim heavenly color) circular video display of local mosques and Friday prayer footage, accompanied by a bellowing call to prayer, follwed by silence to pray… and then abruptly back to your regularly scheduled programming. Kinda a religious Emergency Broadcast System test. Out shopping, in restaurants, etc., although most people around are Muslim, basically not to much of anything is disrupted. The religious hie themselves to the nearest prayer room or mosque (there’s one of either in pretty much any block or mall) and no one bothers them. I miss some of the _muezzin_; it’s really a beautiful sound even though I’m an unbeliever. Unfortunately the guy at the mosque across the street from our house didn’t have the greatest voice… In more secular parts of the Muslim world (I’m thinking about larger places in Bosnia say, or Tunisia) not much of anything happens during the call; I remember the very first time I heard it the guy selling techno cassettes in Tuzla didn’t even turn down his boom box, which was disappointing to me as an observer hoping for a different cultural experience. It’s become background, like church bells in a western city. In smaller, more conservative Muslim towns around the world, people are more obervant. ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-paul-in-saudi/277046/9 "2004-11-29T13:31:58Z")
> [@Jeffro](#): > > I believe that Muslims are called to prayer three times a day. Could you tell me, > > 1. How long do these prayer sessions last? > 2. What do you do during this time? Are you allowed to go about your business or > are you expected to stand still and wait for this to end? > > Just curious. 1. The prayer sessions last for a while about 20 minutes IIRC, but it’s not a requirement to pray all of that time (think of it as a window of opportunity to fulfill your prayer obligation), how long you pray is up to you. Also, Muslims must cleanse themselves prior to prayer, so some of the time is spent doing this. 2. I used to either keep working, if it was during the work day. For example I might check my email while my colleagues prayed. In the office where I worked in Jeddah there was one office where all of the guys went to pray together. I was told this was not a requirement but that it was just “nicer” to pray together. For the early and late prayers I was usually asleep. For the evening prayer the non-Muslims try and get into the restaurant and get served before the call to prayer begins, else one just ends up waiting. I don’t know that this prayer always falls around dinner time, but it seemed to whenever I was there. I think for Christians it would be okay to quietly say your own prayers during these times, but prosyletizing would definitely not be allowed at any time. Shibb, a past occasional visitor to Saudi. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2005, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-paul-in-saudi/277046/10 "2005-03-03T12:17:58Z")
> [@Jeffro](#): > > I believe that Muslims are called to prayer three times a day. Could you tell me, > > 1. How long do these prayer sessions last? > 2. What do you do during this time? Are you allowed to go about your business or > are you expected to stand still and wait for this to end? > > Just curious. My deepest apologies for not replying to this OP in a timely manner. I have only just got my computer back from the shop and did a vanity search on my name, and wham! there is a post from four years ago. smack: The guys are out of the office for about twenty minutes. During that time I continue to work, have a coffee or gossip about those who are absent. Incidentally, Muslims pray five times a day, but three are during ‘work hours.’ : ---
**Author:** ![Angua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8baadc/32.png) [@Angua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angua)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2005, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-paul-in-saudi/277046/11 "2005-03-03T19:33:34Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > \*\*Fives \*\*times a day. It’s one of the 5 pillars of (Sunni) Islam. Nitpick – Prayer five times a day is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. No Sunni or Shia about it. Its compulsory _for all_ Muslims, regardless of sect. ---
**Author:** ![Atticus\_Finch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ec9cab/32.png) [@Atticus\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atticus_Finch)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2005, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-paul-in-saudi/277046/12 "2005-03-04T02:43:49Z")
It’s also interesting to note that you don’t have to go to a mosque or prayer-room to pray. My Indonesian tutor would just check his watch (no muezzin around, this was an Australian country town), excuse himself, go ritually wash and pray for about five minutes. In a largely Muslim country, you might see a shopkeeper on his prayer mat behind the counter, or a couple of people stopped by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Once in Fez, I must have been in a coffee house unusually full of observant people, because maybe 40 of the 50 people there quit sipping at the adhan (the call to prayer) and just started praying in a group on the street. All that’s required to pray is to ritually wash yourself, with water or maybe clean sand, then perform the ritual in a fairly clean area, facing towards Mecca. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2005, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-paul-in-saudi/277046/13 "2005-03-04T07:15:26Z")
_Minor data point:_ About a decade ago, I was working on a big air-defense project for the Saudis. One side effect of that effort was that we had a bunch of pilots from the Saudi Air Force hanging out with us, since the Kingdom wanted to get them acquainted with introductory software development. Anyhoo, we had a trailer in the back set up as a prayer room. The fellas would usually just slip out quietly around prayer time and pop back in 20 minutes later. Very uneventful for the most part, though I once heard that there was a bit of a fuss because a female janitor went in one night as part of the housekeeping routine…