New series: Adventure!

My friend Peter is fond of pointing out how, although the Internet makes it so infinitely much easier to explore other cultures and subcultures, few ever take advantage of this. My Internet is very different from yours. And when they mix, flame war!

Yes!

So, given that our guessing game was such a good gimmick, I'm going to launch a new series—Adventure!—wherein we explore other cultures and subcultures via the Internet. I welcome your suggestions. Name some group, and we'll track down where they hang out on the web.

First stop: Scary specter over the West and Christianity's biggest competitor, Islam.

Did you know you can install a program that will recite Islam's daily prayers for you on your own computer? You can!



So many things here:

• Athan? That's what the prayers are called, I guess?
• Athans vary from holy place to holy place?
• Makkah, Madina, Al-Aqsa—I've been to Al-Aqsa!
• Times and direction are so precise!
• Of course the five prayer times have names!
• There are apparently 5+ methods for calculating Fajr and Isha:
  
  
  
  
• But only two for Asr:
  
  
  
  
• Hijri calendar, eh? Calendars!
  
• The Zakat? The Zakat! Muslim ARDF, natch.
  

Under the "Web Services" menu the first link is How to Pray. It takes you to a Flash tutorial on IslamicFinder.org, entitled The Right Way to Pray. My first impression is that the precision with times and direction is indicative: this guide "for beginners" lists 30 steps to proper prayer, not counting the obligatory ablutions preceding prayer ("cleansing the nostrils," etc.).

However, I've had enough experience with Eastern Orthodoxy to allow for arcane ritual. What really grabbed me was the content of the prayer:



Most of it is pretty familiar—the resurrection reference unexpectedly so. But the reference to the Christians as "those who went astray," and to the Jews as "those who earned Your Anger," with a capital 'A'? Yikes! I'm trying to think of where in Christian churches I've seen this kind of religious hardball codified in the same way. It's got to be there, right? Help me out here.

Granted, the specific references to Jews and Christians appear to be editorial insertions, and there is surely a spectrum within Islam from militant to moderate. Where does this website fit? When a moderate Muslim recites this text 20 times each day (the tutorial lists it 4 times during the 30 steps), are they thinking specifically of Jews and Christians? Or could they maybe be thinking of lapsed Muslims or something tamer?

I guess I'm a little scared about Islam. It seems like a really hard religion, as in cold hard, as in not much nuance or ironic distance, not much grace. That's something people around me think, but was I too easy on the ABC? More adventuring to do! Feed back to Chad Whitacre.