The Chronicles of Local Space

A fictional exploration of nearby star systems

Religion in Local Space

Most of the religions of Earth are still in existence beyond the thirtieth century. In addition, new religions have been revealed and risen to prominence.

Existing religions

Islam

By the 25th century, Islam underwent a peaceful split due to the incompatibility of some core beliefs of Islam with living away from Earth. The new Islamic sect is called Offworlder Islam.

In Offworlder Islam, some of the Five Pillars of Islam are modified so that the faithful can continue to live by them in spirit, at the expense of no longer following the Pillars as closely as Earthly Muslims.

One of the traditional Five Pillars is the pilgrimmage to Mecca on Earth. In Offworlder Islam, the pilgrimmage to Mecca is not compulsory for the faithful due to the inability of most Offworld Muslims to travel to Earth so they can visit Mecca. Instead, the pilgrimmage to Mecca is replicated on each world with one replica of Mecca on each world, and it is there to which an Offworlder Muslim will travel on pilgrimmage. At these replicas of Mecca, an Offworlder Muslim can perform the same pious activities that they are expected to perform at Mecca on Earth. To sanctify these relicas of Mecca, several stones are transported from Mecca on Earth and are kept in the replica of the Masjid al-Haram on each world.

Many Earthbound Muslims consider these replicas of Mecca as being nothing more than theme parks, but that does not stop the Offworlder Muslims from treating them as hallowed ground.

Observance Decimal
Time
Earth
Time
Fajr Prayer 200 04:52
Dhuhr Prayer 500 12:00
Asr Prayer 625 15:00
Maghrib Prayer 750 18:00
Isha Prayer 800 19:08
Ramadan fast begins 200 04:52
Ramadan fast ends 750 18:00

Another of the Five Pillars that is modified to suit offworld life is the times of prayer. Offworlder Muslims who live on tidelocked planets or in artificial habitats cannot follow the same rules for prayer times as a Muslim who lives on a world with a natural day-night cycle. These Offworlder Muslims follow prayer times that are tied to the artificial day of the world, thus treating the world as if it had a natural period of rotation. These prayer times were originally proclaimed by a 22nd-century fatwa, and are based on an idealised version of the solar day as observed from Mecca on Earth at the time of the equinox. These times of observance have since become incorporated into the core beliefs of Offworlder Muslims, and many members of the older sects of Islam also follow these times if no alternative is available.

When Offworlder Muslims pray, they will face the direction of Mecca if they are on a planet. For all planets other than the Earth and Moon, this direction slowly changes during the day. Computational methods are available for each world that allow the direction to Mecca to be found when Earth or Sol are not visible. Many Offworlder mosques are equipped with a Sol Circle, which is a circle of green lights around the inner room of the mosque. These lights are connected to a computer and are lit so as to indicate the direction of Sol. To accommodate a Sol Circle, the prayer rooms of all Offworlder mosques are circular, even if they are not equipped with a Sol Circle.

When Offworlder Muslims are on a space settlement or spaceship, the direction of Sol will generally be constantly changing due to the rotation of the space settlement or spaceship, so they must find another way to orient themselves. The most common way of doing this is for the faithful to face the direction of rotation of the ship or station. Here, it is not the direction of facing that is important but the act of prayer. Sometimes, the direction of Sol is known, such as when a spaceship is travelling directly toward or away from Sol. At these times, the faithful will face Sol to pray.

For obvious reasons, Offworlder Muslims cannot observe the lunar crescent to start a new month, so they follow a version of the Islamic calendar that is calculated and not observed and is tailored to each world. On each world, the length of the local version of the Islamic calendar is approximately the same as the length of the Islamic calendar on Earth (about 354.36707 Earth days), so the number of days in each month will be greater on worlds with short solar days and vice versa. The lack of a match between the length of the Islamic calendar and the length of the local one on any world does not pose any particular problems for Muslims because the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar that follows the phases of the moon. As such, it does not follow the solar calendar even on Earth, so Muslims would be used to this.

New Religions

Universalism

God and the Universe are one.
Teachings 2:2, Universal Holy Book

Universalism (also known as Sympantheism from the Greek for Universe God) is a new religion that was revealed in the 29th century after the first interstellar colonies were founded. The religion teaches that if God is omnipresent, and the Universe is all there is, then God and the Universe must be one and the same.

The faith is similar to early religions that worshipped the Sun as a god, except the divine attributes of the Sun have been transferred to the Universe. The Universe-God is the giver of all life.

The faith has few followers on Earth, but some of the outer worlds have significant numbers of followers.

Unified Temple of Abraham

The Unified Temple of Abraham, or the Faith of Unity, is an Abrahamic religion that unifies many of the beliefs of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Bahá’í Faith, and incorporates the teachings of these faiths as well as some teachings of Buddhism and Hinduism.

Some of the beliefs of the Unified Temple are:

The faith was revealed in 2434.

Chaplains from the Unified Temple are in demand because their ecumenical beliefs give them good knowledge of other faiths as well as their own. This make it possible for them to provide spiritual counsel to believers of other faiths with little difficulty.

Believers of the Unified Temple tend not to proselytize, preferring instead to open their services to members of all faiths and letting the curious investigate the beliefs of the Faith on their own initiative.


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