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girlwhowaspluggedout writes:
Hoping to be a pioneer on the Red Planet? First seek permission from your local cleric. Dubai's Khaleej Times reports that the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment in the UAE has ruled that promoting or being involved in a one-way trip to Mars is prohibited by Islam. The fatwa appears to be a response to Mars One's call for volunteers to make the pioneering trip to the red planet.
According to the General Authority, 'Such a one-way journey poses a real risk to life, and that can never be justified in Islam. There is a possibility that an individual who travels to planet Mars may not be able to remain alive there, and is more vulnerable to death.' Because of the inherent dangers of the trip, those who choose to go there are likely to die for no 'righteous reason,' thus incurring 'punishment similar to that of suicide in the Hereafter.'
The Khaleej Times further states that the General Authority fears that some of the volunteers, among whom are 500 Saudis and other Arabs, may be interested in traveling to Mars to escape punishment or to avoid standing before Allah for judgment. The General Authority decreed that 'this is an absolutely baseless and unacceptable belief because not even an atom falls outside the purview of Allah, the Creator of everything.'"
[ED Note: Likening the one-way-ticket to suicide does make some theological sense, but I am saddened that the Authority does not consider space exploration a "righteous reason" to risk one's life. In times past, many great explorers hailed from Muslim societies, and were part of what made them great.]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jcd on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:10PM
I thought about the trip pretty much as suicide once I heard about it, but now that I'm seeing clerics debate it I have to wonder... is it only considered suicidal because you can't reintegrate with society on Earth? They aren't traveling to Mars to die, they're traveling there to explore, and potentially, you could argue that a Muslim (or someone of any faith) is traveling there to explore new dimensions of the faith and communicate them back. You could also argue that the dangers of traveling on foot to Mecca five hundred years ago was just as likely a path to death as traveling to Mars will be.
Though flying to Mars may actually be safer.
"What good's an honest soldier if he can be ordered to behave like a terrorist?"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by etherscythe on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:03PM
The argument is, apparently, that anything other than old age (or possibly martyrdom) is an unacceptable risk, and therefore tantamount to suicide. We're all, ultimately, going to die barring an unprecedented medical breakthrough. Choosing how you die sounds like the most liberating gift a man can be given. To decry this as against God's will (whatever name you think he chooses for himself) strikes me as supremely pessimistic. The implication is that ever leaving your house to learn anything about the world or take any kind of risk to have a life worth living is unacceptable.
This is the kind of thing that pushed me to Taoism's self-deterministic empiricism. I like how Shinedown put it:
I'm so sick of this tombstone mentality,
If there's an afterlife,
Then it'll set you free.
But I'm not gonna part the seas
You're a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:56PM
I like how Dead Kennedys put it:
All religions make me wanna throw up
All religions make me sick
All religions make me wanna throw up
All religions suck
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mhajicek on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:50PM
According to XKCD only 93% of humans have died.
http://what-if.xkcd.com/27/ [xkcd.com]
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by etherscythe on Thursday February 20 2014, @10:39PM
Let's turn it around and issue our own fatwa! It is now obligatory for all Muslims to have themselves cryogenically preserved after childbearing age, as any other lifestyle leads to premature death. The funding from this aught to push science forward nicely ;)
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 1) by JThundley on Saturday February 22 2014, @03:57AM
Allah watched over them traveling on foot on the Earth. He can't watch over them on Mars. Wait, what?