This question pertains to something I saw in the British TV drama “Survivors”–though it is a question about religion, not the show, so I think it’s a GQ thread.
WARNING: SMALL SPOILER BELOW.
The show is about a deadly flu plague that kills 90% of humanity. One survivor is a teenage Muslim boy, who in the midst of the crisis goes to a mosque to pray with his father. The show leaves the two at night, praying and intermittently bowing to touch forehead to floor.
We return to the mosque the next morning. The men are all bowed in prayer. The boy calls to his father, who is dead. The boy rises to discover that all the men in the room are dead, kneeling with forehead to floor.
My question is, how could this believably happen? Is it part of Muslim practice to sleep all night in the mosque, in the praying position, so that a worshiper might conceivably wake to find that everyone had died in the night?
It would be obvious very soon. The prayer leader gives cues for the various movements, and no individual prayer lasts more than a few minutes with a maximum of a few seconds in the bowing position.
I know, I figured. It’s like, for me who grew up Catholic, a similar scene where everyone knelt down to pray and then 10 hours later they were all dead in the praying position–but for a moment someone thought they might be alive. Just no way.
It seemed so damn stupid I couldn’t believe it, and it turned out to be unbelievable. Thanks.
No problem.