[LEAPSECS] The definition of a day

[Kevin Birth]

Somehow in the editing it came across that I suggested that Muslims don't use software to know prayer times.  That is absolutely not true.  I'm one of the few people who has researched such uses.  They are widespread, and they also nationalistic.  The smartphone versions also use GPS to calculate proper prayer times and Qibla, and many even feature a call to prayer as a ringtone.  The two that I often use in my talks are islamicfinder.org and moonsighting.com.  Moonsighting.com is really cool because it uses NASA data to indicate where the moon is visible across the globe.

There are Muslims who argue against using such technology and state that it is better for a Muslim to use the traditional methods of watching the sky to know when to pray than to use an app.  This is a permutation of the debate over whether there should be a worldwide Islamic calendar to determine the start of Ramadan rather than having each location start Ramadan based on observations by local witnesses.

One awkward consequences of all the different calendar/salat apps is that many of my Muslim friends and students find themselves beginning and ending Ramadan on different days.  This results in some feasting while others are fasting.

Cheers, 

Kevin


________________________________________
From: LEAPSECS [leapsecs-bounces at leapsecond.com] on behalf of Brooks Harris [brooks at edlmax.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2015 2:22 PM
To: leapsecs at leapsecond.com
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] The definition of a day

On 2015-02-05 01:51 PM, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> Kevin Birth <Kevin.Birth at qc.cuny.edu> wrote:
>
> I'm no longer that integrated, but from earlier years i know no
> Muslim that uses software for that, not even watches.

Some of my Muslim friends most certainly do -

http://www.muslimpro.com/

-Brooks
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