See title. Are there exact hour/minute combinations for when devout Muslims need to say the respective prayers? How much can you miss by? What type of exigent circumstances justify missing or postponing one?
Strictly anecdotal. When I was doing beverage delivery, I had a couple of stores where they had a small corner set up with prayer rugs and would stop whatever they were doing (including waiting on customers or checking in a delivery) in order to pray at the proper time.
I believe that 5 times a day are required but would presume there are legitimate reasons for missing.
In my experience, Islam is not actually a hugely legalistic religion. It’s the spirit of things that matter. For most people, the answer is “Do you best.”
If you miss a prayer, I’m pretty sure you can just make it up or skip it and try to do better next time. The five-times-a-day thing is about you and your relationship to God, it’s not like God really needs you to do or anything. If you are missing prayers because you want to play World of Warcraft longer, that’s a problem and probably going to hurt your relationship with God. But if you are sincerely trying your best, God’s not going to ding you for not bowing at exactly the right moment any more than the Catholic God would ding you for running late for mass.
In the Middle East, though, and I assume in other countries with a Muslim majority, non-Muslims are told not to be surprised when their hosts break off a business meeting to pray. My dad did business in both Saudi Arabia and the UAE and said there was never an exception. More secular countries, like Turkey, seem to be a little more loosey-goosey, in my experience.
This is actually part of what prompted the OP – I see street vendors praying in big cities, but they always seem to finish whichever transactions are pending . . . of course their transactions probably take shorter than white collar business negotiations.
In my experience, it seems to have something to do with what you’re doing and if you’re in earshot of a muezzin. For instance, I crossed the Israeli-Egyptian border in the middle of a prayer time and arrived at the Egyptian customs office while the prayers were still going on. The muezzin was still calling to prayer and it was totally audible. We just stood around for a few minutes waiting for the prayers to end.
A couple years ago, I was visiting Cappadocia, in Turkey, and I was on a tour (I know, so bourgeois, but it’s hard to get around Cappadocia without a car) with some other tourists, including a very religious-seeming Muslim family from India (the woman wore a hijab; and they talked about how they prefer to take vacations in Muslim countries because it’s easier to get halal food). As we zipped around the countryside in the van, we didn’t hear any calls to prayer and the Indian family didn’t mention praying, but when we stopped to have lunch at a restaurant, the man went off to pray in a separate room before rejoining the group to eat. It wasn’t an organized prayertime, as I didn’t hear the muezzin.
There is a time every day when its time to pray. However there is usually a period as opposed to a specific moment and since paryer takes about 5 minutes not a problem.
Indeed it is proper to finish what you are doing before you go to pray. You can also where (as is very common) miss some prayers and then make them up at the end of the day.
My Egyptian friends a few years ago had a detailed list of the current month’s sunrise times printed from an Arabic website stuck to their fridge. I never asked about it but assumed that it was connected to morning prayers. They were very religious.
Much more likely for Ramazan.
When I was a tourist in Morocco, I was surprised how many people didn’t stop to pray. We could be right next to a mosque and minaret, hear the call, look around, and almost no one would interrupt what they were doing. It was background noise. The people who did respond were a small percentage of the ones who weren’t really otherwise occupied.
However, people seemed to work prayer in throughout the day, when they had downtime. At various times people would be praying in a place obviously set aside for prayer. But it did seem to be a “work it in to your day when you can get to it” type of thing.
AK84 do courts in Pakistan recess during the call for prayer? Or do the proceedings just pause and people pray in the courtroom?
^
No and No. Court times are from 8 15 to 4, with a break at 12 30-1. The court does not stop for prayer and niether do people start praying inside the court.
In some judicial complexes as well as in some large public areas there are could be places set aside for prayer, but I will echo what amarinth said above, mosques are mostly empty except on Friday afternoons and yes people do pray in their downtime.