Combating Islam

The Five Daily Prayers in Islam

A Deep Dive into Contradictions, Impracticalities, and Authoritarian Enforcement

Islam mandates five daily prayers (Salah) as a core pillar. Every Muslim is expected to perform these prayers at set times facing Mecca (the Qibla). This practice is so central that missing prayers can lead to physical punishment, as evidenced by extremist groups like ISIS and the Taliban enforcing it with violence—actions directly traceable to Muhammad’s own instructions. Let’s break down why this ritual, while sacred in Islam, is riddled with contradictions, geographical impracticalities, and logical failures.

1. Physical Violence Over Prayer Compliance?

Sunan Abu Dawud (Hadith 495) records Muhammad instructing believers to command children to pray from age seven and to physically discipline them by beating if they fail by age ten. This violent enforcement isn’t just historical; modern extremist groups echo this exact practice, whipping or beating Muslims for missing prayers.

The question: Are groups like ISIS and Taliban truly “extremist,” or are they simply following Muhammad’s commands as recorded in authentic hadith? The violent enforcement of prayer is not an extremist innovation; it’s Islamic orthodoxy.

2. The Quran and the Five Daily Prayers: Missing Explicit Mention

Despite the centrality of five daily prayers in Islam, the Quran itself never explicitly mandates five daily prayers. Instead, the Quran vaguely refers to “established prayer” at dawn, decline of the sun, and night. Passages like Quran 11:114 and 17:78 suggest two or three prayer times, not five:

Quran 17:78: “Establish prayer at the decline of the sun [from its meridian] until the darkness of the night and [also] the Quran at dawn.”
Quran 11:114: “Indeed, prayer has been decreed upon the believers a decree of specified times.”

The detailed system of five daily prayers only emerges in secondary sources — hadith collections, like Sahih Muslim — written decades after Muhammad’s death. This strongly suggests the strict five-prayer ritual was a later institutional development, not a direct Quranic mandate.

3. The Qibla: Facing Mecca in a Flat-Earth Mindset

Muslims are required to face Mecca (the Qibla) during prayer, a rule repeated in the Quran (2:149). But classical Islamic jurisprudence, reflected in manuals like Al-Majmu’ (a standard Shafi’i manual), treats the Earth as flat and static. The logic: if you are in Mecca but cannot see the Kaaba, you must face its direction, even if that means your back is technically turned towards it — because the earth is imagined flat.

Problem: The Quran and Islamic tradition show no awareness of a spherical Earth. This ignorance creates absurdities:

Someone located exactly opposite Mecca on the globe (the antipode) would be facing away from Mecca, essentially having their back to the Qibla when praying, which is forbidden.
The notion of “front” and “back” towards the Qibla breaks down entirely with a spherical Earth.

4. Prayer Times: Arbitrary, Geographically Inconsistent, and Astronomically Impossible

Prayer times depend on the sun’s position (dawn, noon, sunset, night). This might work in 7th-century Arabia near the equator, but the world is much bigger:

In high latitude regions (Scotland, Norway, Alaska, New Zealand, Antarctica), daylight hours vary drastically throughout the year.
In places like Aberdeen, Scotland, in summer, the time between night prayer and dawn prayer can be as short as 4.5 hours — hardly enough time for rest.
In Norway’s Arctic Circle, the sun doesn’t set for months, making it impossible to determine the required time for certain prayers.
In Alaska's Barrow, the sun doesn’t rise for 67 days in winter, breaking the standard Quranic prayer timetable.
In Antarctica, the sun may not rise for half a year — again, making prayers based on sun position impossible.

5. How Do Muslims in These Regions Pray?

A hadith from Riyadh al-Salihin (1808) is often cited, where Muhammad supposedly says:
“Make an estimate of time and then pray.” This hadith is from an apocalyptic context about the Antichrist, not a practical guide for modern geography. It’s a weak, irrelevant justification for the astronomical impossibility of strictly following prayer times in extreme regions.

6. What Does This Tell Us?

The Quranic mandate for prayer times is vague and inconsistent with established Islamic ritual practice.
The five daily prayers as performed today come from hadith, not Quran, and show no adaptation to the modern world’s realities.
The entire prayer timing system assumes a flat Earth with relatively stable day/night cycles — a worldview clearly disproven and ignored.
The Quran or hadith never addresses the astronomical problems of prayer times for places with extreme latitudes, an obvious omission if it were from an all-knowing, all-powerful deity.
The strict enforcement of prayer times, sometimes with violence, is hypocritical and out of touch with physical reality.

7. The Bottom Line

Islam’s core ritual of prayer is a rigid, arbitrary system stuck in 7th-century Arabia’s geography and astronomy. It promotes harsh discipline backed by physical punishment, even as its foundation (five fixed prayers timed by the sun’s position) cannot be consistently observed worldwide.

If Islam claims to be a universal, perfect, divine religion, why does its prayer system:

Depend on an outdated, false cosmology?
Ignore the natural astronomical realities of Earth’s rotation, tilt, and spherical shape?
Mandate physical punishment for failure to comply with an impractical ritual?

The answer is clear: the ritual is a man-made institution, later codified by Islamic scholars, based on limited understanding and reinforced by authoritarian control — not a revelation perfectly suited for all times and places.

If you want the truth, stop defending a ritual blind to reality and start questioning why this cornerstone of Islam crumbles under scrutiny.

Combating Islam

Friday, June 27, 2025