Spliting up Africa and Modern Religions IN SPACE!

[sunfall_shadows]

Setting: Fandom tangental, but the only relevant part is that it's just like our world until the late 1990's, where the whole world is united basically overnight into a largely peacful magical kingdom. From there I'm taking a sci-fi route and throwing people onto multiple generation/colony ships and sending them out into the universe, never to

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[nyxelestia]

There is also a laundry-list of reasons one is supposed to do the Hajj. The biggest is related to a sense of unity (every Muslim is wearing and doing the same things as each other, and as their ancestors have for centuries), followed by teaching traits like perseverance, humility, etc. What's important about the Hajj is what you are supposed to take away from it to be an even better Muslim than you were before it. BUT, that won't mean anything if you end up pursuing "bad" behavior in order to do complete this "good" behavior.

So, if you are too poor, don't do the hajj - don't put yourself or your family in the danger of poverty for the sake of the hajj. Or, if you are not healthy enough, don't do the hajj - the lessons you learn won't mean anything if you die along the way. For many, if it's a matter of health or other circumstances, then sending someone on the hajj in your spiritual stead is considered an acceptable substitute (opinion on this seems to vary). Additionally, don't do the hajj if to do so, you have to pursue haram or bad behavior - i.e. don't do hajj/hajj doesn't count if you have to murder someone in order to make the journey. I know at least some Muslims seem to side-eye pregnant women going on the Hajj because it endangers the health and safety of the woman and her unborn child.

Now, the thing is that all of this only "counts" if you basically are left with no choice. The idea is that Allah will understand if one is not able to do it, but that's different choosing not to do it. The real question is, is leaving the planet/solar system forever "choosing" not to do the hajj?

If I had to speculate, my best guess is that die-hard, purist, and/or fundamentalist Muslims would decry Muslim space-travelers for leaving, and posit it as a choice. But, devotion to God/Allah is only supposed to a part of one's life, not all of it, so putting one's entire life on hold for the sake of a few weeks' journey would probably seem excessive to many other Muslims, and most of the ones I know personally.

Most likely, as long as Muslims away from earth did a lot of prayer, and somehow arranged for someone on Earth to go on the hajj in their stead, most Muslims would take it as legit - but not all, and probably not even most. I wouldn't be surprised if this led to in-fighting about whether or not someone is a "real" Muslim if they're not on Earth, because distance from Earth is tantamount to rejecting the hajj.

[sunfall_shadows]

Thank you very much! Exactly the kind of insight I needed. I knew the hajj was important, but not why.

It's entirely voluntary, and everyone will know going in that the colonies will be leaving the solar system permanently; there will be no coming back ever. I don't think arranging for someone to go on the hajj in their place will hold up.

Do you think it's reasonable for the spacegoers to modify their version of Islam to keep to the spirit? There will be a complete break from Earth, so attitudes there won't really matter in the long run. Or will most choose to stay on Earth, and it becomes a question of cultural influence rather than religious?

[nyxelestia]

Most likely? Muslims traveling into space would find a way to established new traditions in the spirit of Islam. Some Muslims back home would find these new traditions valid and consider these out-of-system followers to Islam as still being Muslims. Others will decry it and say these ones are not "real" Muslims.

I mean, to put in perspective, right now, there are people who think Muslim women who don't wear a hijab aren't "real" Muslims. This extends to all religions. Right now, American sociopolitical culture is tremendously divided on who or what are "real" Christians due to the cultural emphasis of this year's election. Catholicism is technically a denomination of Christianity, yet many Christians insist Catholics are heretics, not Christians, and basically the equivalent of being another religion entirely (on par with Jews, Muslims, etc.) - and this conflict was happening even before Mormons came into the pictures. Some people consider Mormons to still be Christians; others don't. Are Catholics who don't follow the Pope still Catholics? Some say yes, some say no. This also leads into the question of clerics. Many new religious traditions are considered illegitimate my mainstream counterparts because they are led by women. Are female pastors "real" pastors? Or female priests? There is a new movement of Jewish priestesses who consider themselves Jewish, but others do not think of them as Jewish because, well, they're priestesses.

And this is when it's purely religious - I know a lot of secular Jews, and though they are Atheists, they still identify as Jews because of the cultural heritage, not the faith. They define Judaism as both an ethnicity and a religion, so even though they no longer follow the religion of Judaism, they are still Jews because of the ethnicity. (Incidentally, this mindset also means many people consider converted Jews to not be "real" Jews, because converted Jews are not a part of the ethnic group/descended from Jews, even though they are otherwise following the Jewish religion perfectly.) Others, however, define Judaism as only a religion, so even if someone is ethnically of Jewish descent, if they no longer belief in God, then they are no longer Jewish. (This plays a part into the earlier debate: are the aforementioned women of the previous paragraph 'only' "Jewish priestesses" in that they are ethnically Jewish, and priestesses, but not of the Jewish religion? Are they Jewish priestesses in that they are priestesses of the Jewish religion? Again, this would depend on who you ask.)

[nyxelestia]

Most likely, what you would get is that Muslims colonizing other planets would find some way to re-established a Hajj-like tradition. This article is a very simply explanation of what the Hajj entails and the purposes/meanings behind them (and also demonstrates how this ancient tradition has been modernized, i.e. walkways, tent-cities, etc.)

So maybe Muslims on another planet (if it's a planet with a breathable environment, or has a big biodome somewhere) will spend a day in a tent out in the wilderness in prayer, meditate on a hill, gather pebbles to throw at some symbol of the devil, "sacrifice" meat* (i.e. dedicate meat rations to god, then give it away instead of eating it themselves), get a haircut, and run counter-clockwise around a big rock seven times. They will consider themselves to still be Muslims/to be "real" Muslims. About half the ones back home on Earth will agree, and the other half won't, which is pretty much how most religions in the world work, anyway.

[nyxelestia]

* = Something people don't realize about animal sacrifices in most religions: it's less that people go out of their way to kill something, and more that people take something they were already going to kill and dedicate it to god. Most of the time, after an animal is sacrificed/killed, people eat it - it's just that it's eaten with respect (i.e. you won't eat it while paying attention to something else or something unimportant).

Animal sacrifice as a tradition was borne out of a time when meat was expensive, and something people ate little of. Eating a lot of meat at once is a big deal in these circumstances, so it became its own event, hence "sacrifices". Animals are as much creations of god/the gods as humans are, and they are being killed so that you may live and thrive, so "sacrificing" them/dedicating them to god is a way of making sure humans respect that.

Islam takes this one step further: instead of eating the meat themselves, Muslims then donate this meat to the poor, people who - in the ancient world, and still in many places today - otherwise would not have meat because of how expensive it is. (Side note: due to the population size, in modern Hajj, many Muslims don't actually have anything to do with the animal killing. They just pay for an animal, that animal is killed in their name as part of a mass slaughter, and then the meat is distributed, and the Muslim gets a receipt confirming this, and thus confirming they've completed this part of the Hajj. Hajj is an incredibly modernized ancient tradition.)

In a space colony, what Muslims would do about this would depend on how they get meat. If they continued to raise and kill animals, then Muslims would save up or set aside animals to sacrifice, then give the meat away. If it's an egalitarian environment, the meat would just be given away to everyone else/shared by everyone. Alternatively, if the meat is artificial or cloned (and/or distributed on a ration basis), then what would most likely happen is that Muslims would set aside that meat or those meat rations, dedicate them to god, then give them away.

If there are disparities (i.e. economic classes, ranks, etc.), then the people at the bottom of this disparity would get the meat. If the colony reflects our world, this would mean the poorest. But let's say you are in an environment where everyone has the same "wealth"/living standard, but there are ranks (maybe a military environment, or a science environment where scientists and "orderlies"/"blue collar workers" are clearly hierarchical), then whoever is at the "bottom" of this ranking system would get the meat.

It could go one step further: some people interpret animal sacrifice as being about respecting that an animal's life was snuffed out for the sake of your own. However, others see it as dedicating the most expensive food around (meat is almost always the most expensive) to God, and then giving it away instead of eating it for yourself. So, maybe meat or meat rations are easy to come by on your space colony, but something else is really hard to get a hold of - say, sugar. So some Muslims might set aside and "sacrifice" sugar by dedicating it to god and giving it away. (This could lead to a cultural divide where some Muslims sacrifice meat rations and other sacrifice sugar rations. They might all go through the same motions (i.e. tapping at buttons on a screen to send information around, same way we do to send money around), yet they have a divide about what this button-tapping actually means.)

I fucking hate LJ's character limits.

[sunfall_shadows]

Thank you again. I've still got plenty to think about and work on, obviously, but I've got a much better grasp on the idea than before.