Pray less and work more, says Islamic preacher

Egypt govt workers spend 27 minutes a day actually working

CAIRO (AFP)

Well-known Egyptian preacher, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has put forward a simple answer to Egypt's productivity problem -- pray less, work more.

"Praying is a good thing ... 10 minutes should be enough," Qaradawi said in a religious edict, or fatwa, published on his website.

The fatwa is aimed at removing prayer as a pretext for not producing.

According to an official study, Egypt's six million government employees spend an average of only 27 minutes per day actually working, reflecting a real problem with productivity.

Problem

Praying five times a day is one of the five pillars of Islam, along with making a pilgrimage to Mecca and giving alms to the poor.

Two of each day's five sessions -- the dhuhr (noon) prayer and asr (afternoon) prayer -- fall within working hours, bringing work to a standstill at least twice a day in many places.

A prayer generally takes an average of 10 minutes, but it can be extended if a worshipper chooses to recite one of the longer verses of the Quran.

And before the prayers themselves, there is also a mandatory ablution during which worshippers must wash their faces, hands and arms, feet and heads. In large office buildings, trips to the bathroom can also eat away at valuable work time.

In every large company, factory or public building, there is a formal prayer space. Individual prayer rugs, slumped over the backs of chairs or folded neatly on a desk, are often at hand in public offices, ready to be used once the call to prayer booms out over the public address system.

Solution

Qaradawi offered a few ideas to help shorten the prayer time: Muslims can do the mandatory pre-prayer wash at home before reaching the office, instead of in the office toilets during working hours.

"To save some time, they can also just put some water over their socks, instead of taking (socks) off to wash the feet," Qaradawi says in his fatwa.

While it may be too early to judge the effects of the popular sheikh's fatwa on productivity in the work place, Egyptian clerics, in a rare show of unity, have largely agreed with the Qatar-based cleric.

"He's right. I cannot say the contrary. One must not waste time at work and use prayer as the pretext," Sheikh Fawzi al-Zifzaf, of the center of Islamic studies at Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's main seat of learning, told AFP.

As for Mohammed al-Shahhat al-Gendi, secretary general of the Council of Supreme Islamic affairs, "10 minutes are absolutely suitable for one prayer." "Improving productivity is not at all contrary to Islam," he told AFP.

Religious beliefs in Egypt are overt, from the headscarf covering the majority of women's heads to the bruise on many a man's forehead showing how piously and how often he has touched his head to the ground in prostration.