Police gaffe makes Muslims pray in wrong direction
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch police station trying to help Muslim detainees face Mecca for their prayers painted arrows in cells pointing in the wrong direction.
The Segbroek police station in The Hague borrowed the idea of putting compass marks on ceilings from an Amsterdam hotel, the Dutch daily De Telegraaf reported on Friday. Muslims pray five times a day, facing east in the direction of Mecca. But the arrows in Segbroek pointed west.
"This is a really gigantic, stupid blunder," a police spokesman told the De Telegraaf.
"The faulty compass marks have been immediately corrected. It is a mystery for us how this could have possibly happened".
I can imagine Monty Python skit about this..."i can't IMAGINE how this could have possibly happened!" Yeah, right...LOL!
All other police cells in the Dutch capital will soon get similar compass marks, the in-house newspaper of The Hague police said.
The Netherlands is home to 1 million Muslims out of a population of more than 16 million.
Disturbing that there are than many infiltrating other countries. Well, it is taught in their mosques that they will take over the west via internally...via the governments, etc,, just like xian fundies are also attempting to do.
Immigration and the integration of newcomers have been hot topics since the rise and murder of populist politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002, who said the country could not absorb any more foreigners.
11 comments:
Islam is the fastest growing religion............in prisons.
I suspect that all Christians who read this post are clutching their bibles and repeating "God works in mysterious ways" over and over. It has to be tough to keep one's head in the sand all the time.
Stardust,
Things like this make me wonder what they think would happen to them if they didn't pray East.
Vjack,
It is hard to keep one's head in the sand because eventually they might come acoss a fossil.
I wish I could stick them in a room that, unbeknownst to them, quietly rotated while they were praying.
This has to be hard on the knees. Plus with all the old men screwing all the young boys, putting your ass in the air is an invitation.
the alpha said:
Things like this make me wonder what they think would happen to them if they didn't pray East.
I pondered the same question and by reading Anwar Shaikh - a great Pakistani dissident of Islam - found out that the penalty for not praying East is risking salvation; for salvation one must follow such dictates as praying to the East. Which leads one to ponder: why must one pray East? Shaikh answers the question thusly:
For the purpose of imposing Arab psychological superiority on non-Arab Muslims, he decreed that they must prostrate five-times-a-day facing Mecca. This is not only an act of submission to Mecca, the capital city of Arabia, but also proves beyond a shadow of doubt that God lives in Mecca, otherwise why should people prostrate in that direction?
jdhurf is being more accurate - you must face Mecca when you pray, and from the Netherlands Mecca is east-ish.
If they were 180 degrees out then of course they were STILL facing Mecca, just taking the long route round.
I presume that Allah is merciful and that should you be disorientated, or a moslem on Mir he'll let it slide if when you pray you don't quite get the direction right.
I wonder why Allah can't hear if you aren't facing east??? Maybe he needs some hearing aids?
They always say god and allah are everywhere, yet they need loudspeakers, and to pray in certain directions, and have special places to talk to their gods. Funny how these gods are always where believers want them to be.
I feel that ur views are a bit too Ethnocentric ...and tell me one religion that does not use ritual symbolism ??????
purpledreams, if you look deeper into my blog, you will see that I think ALL religious ritual is irrational superstition.
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