Airborne prayers problem solved for tech-savvy Muslims

06 April 2012 - 05H45


Crescentrating chief executive Fazal Bahardeen, seen here displaying the website link to the Air Travel Prayer Time Calculator on his computer in Singapore, on April 3.
Crescentrating chief executive Fazal Bahardeen, seen here displaying the website link to the Air Travel Prayer Time Calculator on his computer in Singapore, on April 3.

This file photo, taken in 2010, shows Fazal Bahardeen, speaking to an AFP reporter during an interview in Singapore. Fazal said his team plans to develop a mobile app that will point users in the direction of the Islamic holy city of Mecca, to which Muslims must face when they pray, based on the flight path.

AFP - As a frequent flier and devout Muslim, businessman Abdalhamid Evans always comes up against the same challenge in the air: when to say his prayers.

Muslims are required to pray five times a day at certain hours, but this schedule becomes complicated when crossing various time zones at thousands of metres above sea level.

"I usually don't pray when I am in a plane," said Evans, the London-based founder of a website that provides information on the global halal, or Islam-compliant, industry.

"But lately I have been thinking that it is probably better to do them in the air than make them up on arrival," he told AFP.

The problem may be solved for travellers such as Evans thanks to an innovation called the Air Travel Prayer Time Calculator, developed by Singapore-based Crescentrating, a firm that gives halal ratings to hotels and other travel-related establishments.

Launched earlier this month, the online tool takes data such as prayer times in the country of origin, the destination city and in countries on the flight path and uses an algorithm to plot exact prayer hours during a flight.

Current programmes only allow Muslims to find their prayer hours according to their position on land, and the absence of any tools that can be used to calculate during a flight has compromised many travellers .

"I knew there was lot of frustration among the travellers on this issue, but nobody had really attempted to solve it," Crescentrating chief executive Fazal Bahardeen told AFP in an interview.

Before embarking on a trip, a Muslim traveller can now go to the online calculator in the Crescentrating website and input their departure airport, time of flight and destination.

The calculator then comes up with the prayer times set either in the local time of the airport of origin, the destination city or the country that the aircraft is flying over, which the traveller can then email to themselves to access later.

Fazal said his team plans to develop a mobile app that will also point users in the direction of the Islamic holy city of Mecca, to which Muslims must face when they pray, based on the flight path.

Muslim travellers have welcomed the tool. "It's good for long-haul travelling," said Shiraz Sideek, a vice president at the Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank who travels almost a dozen times a year.

"When you cross different times zones in an airplane, you have a problem of timing when to pray," he told AFP from Abu Dhabi. "The application sounds like a very unique thing and very useful."

Indonesian airline industry executive Sabry Salahudeen agrees that there is a potentially big market for the new tool.

"I've been in the airline industry for the past 20 plus years... To my knowledge I don't think anyone has come up with anything like this," said Salahudeen, vice president for airport operations and aircraft procurement at Pacific Royale Airways, a soon-to-be-launched premium airline in Indonesia.

As more Muslims travel around the world, services catering to their needs are expanding, industry players say.

In 2010, Muslim travellers spent $100 billion, or about 10 percent of total global travel expenditures, according to Crescentrating's Fazal. This is projected to increase to 14-15 percent of the global total by 2020.

The World Tourism Organization last year estimated that an additional two million Arabs will travel overseas within the next twenty years, raising their region's total of outbound tourists to 37 million.

While it is still early days for the Air Travel Prayer Time Calculator, potential customers say mobility is important.

"If it becomes a smartphone app .. it could prove to be a popular idea," said Evans.

Example:
Flight schedule

Departure from Dubai International Airport, United Arab Emirates at 08:30 on 07-04-2012
Arrival at Toronto Pearson International Airport, Canada at 16:30 on 07-04-2012


Prayer times

Dhur=2:30 P.M , Asr @ 1A.M (Both are Dubai Times)



Note: If your watch is set to the time of your departure city, then use the "Time at Origin" as reference time for your Salaath. If it is set to the time of arrival city, then use the "Time at Destination" as reference time for your salaath.
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Uploaded by SunniShiaUnity on Oct 4, 2009

Refuting the accusations that Muslims worship a Moon god, due to the fact that Muslims follow a Lunar calendar and the crescent moon symbol (and star) commonly associated with Islam.
However does the fact that non-muslims use a Gregorian calendar (Solar Calender) prove the fact that they worship the Sun?

The word Allah is used by Arab Christians when they refer to (God), it is not a word for a different god or an idol.
As for the Crescent moon this was introduced during the time of the Ottomans as stated by a non-muslim scholar William Ridgeway, who said the following:

"when we come to examine the history of the crescent as a badge of Muhammadanism, we are confronted by the fact that it was not employed by the Arabs or any of the first peoples who embraced the faith of the prophet. he truth is that the crescent was not identified with Islam until after the appearance of the Osmanli Turks, whilst on the other hand there is the clearest evidence that in the time of the Crusades, and long before, the crescent and star were a regular badge of Byzantium and the Byzantine Emperors, some of whom placed it on their coins."

Another Scholar Franz Babinger states:

"It seems possible, though not certain, that after the conquest Mehmed took over the crescent and star as an emblem of sovereignty from the Byzantines. The half-moon alone on a blood red flag, allegedly conferred on the Janissaries by Emir Orhan, was much older, as is demonstrated by numerous references to it dating from before 1453. But since these flags lack the star, which along with the half-moon is to be found on Sassanid and Byzantine municipal coins, it may be regarded as an innovation of Mehmed. It seems certain that in the interior of Asia tribes of Turkish nomads had been using the half-moon alone as an emblem for some time past, but it is equally certain that crescent and star together are attested only for a much later period. There is good reason to believe that old Turkish and Byzantine traditions were combined in the emblem of Ottoman and, much later, present-day Republican Turkish sovereignty"

John Denham Parsons states:

"it was as the symbol of this Zoroastrian dynasty and of the fair land of Iran, that the Moslems adopted it as their own."

"The earliest church in the Morea to include a saint holding a shield marked by the crescent and star may be St. John Chrysostom, which has been dated on the basis of style to ca. 1300"
-Angeliki E. Laiou, Roy P. Mottahedeh, The Crusades From the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, Dumbarton Oaks, 2001, p278
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