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Islamic Views on the Shape of the Earth (view source)
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[[File:Flat Earth The Wonders of Creation.jpg|right|thumb|175px|Taken from Zekeriya Kazvinî's "Acaib-ül Mahlûkat" (The Wonders of Creation). Translated into Turkish from Arabic. Istanbul: ca. 1553. <BR>This map depicts "a traditional Islamic projection of the world as a flat disk surrounded by the sundering seas which are restrained by the encircling mountains of Qaf".<ref>[http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/world/earth.html Views of the Earth] - World Treasures of the Library of Congress, July 29, 2010</ref> ]] | [[File:Flat Earth The Wonders of Creation.jpg|right|thumb|175px|Taken from Zekeriya Kazvinî's "Acaib-ül Mahlûkat" (The Wonders of Creation). Translated into Turkish from Arabic. Istanbul: ca. 1553. <BR>This map depicts "a traditional Islamic projection of the world as a flat disk surrounded by the sundering seas which are restrained by the encircling mountains of Qaf".<ref>[http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/world/earth.html Views of the Earth] - World Treasures of the Library of Congress, July 29, 2010</ref> ]] | ||
This article takes a closer look at some of the [[Qur'an|Qur'anic]] verses that imply its author assumed the earth is flat. | This article takes a closer look at some of the [[Qur'an|Qur'anic]] verses that imply its author assumed the earth is flat. | ||
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For people who are praying a great distance from Mecca, their qiblah would be somewhere down towards the ground, and the people who are located on the opposite 'side' of the earth would have to pray vertically downward towards the center of the earth. | For people who are praying a great distance from Mecca, their qiblah would be somewhere down towards the ground, and the people who are located on the opposite 'side' of the earth would have to pray vertically downward towards the center of the earth. | ||
So, for example, Muslims in the Solomon Islands in fact blaspheme against Allah, because they defecate downwards toward the direction of the Ka'aba when they answer the call of nature. | |||
For this reason, the [[W:Great circle|great circle]] method came to be used, tracing the shortest distance across the sphere of the Earth towards the Ka'aba. Nevertheless, anywhere on Earth you would be simultaneously praying with both your face and backside aligned along a great circle towards the Ka'aba. At the antipode of Mecca, any direction for all 360 degrees would be facing equally 'towards' and 'away' from Mecca and consequently, there would be no one direction that would be the correct one. | |||
The Americas are mostly in the hemisphere of this antipode to Mecca. There, the [[W:Rhumb line|rhumb line]] method is often preferred because the great circle lines across the continent diverge from the antipode before they start to converge when they enter the hemisphere of Mecca, causing people north and south across the Americas to face away from each as they pray. | |||
===Qur'an 18:47 - Without mountains the Earth will be entirely apparent=== | ===Qur'an 18:47 - Without mountains the Earth will be entirely apparent=== | ||