It may be possible for vacationing Germans to reserve rental lounge chairs at a crowded beach or pool, but in Saudi Arabia it's a crime to reserve rental prayer mats, the Saudi Gazette reports: 2 held for renting Haram prayer space. It appears that both the reserving and the renting are repugnant.
"MAKKAH – Two persons have been arrested for reserving prayer spaces and renting them out to worshippers at Isha and Taraweeh prayer times...“The practice has diminished a lot this year,” Al-Wabil said. “However, we will show no lenience to anyone caught.”All persons who have been arrested for renting out prayer spaces have been foreigners, Al-Wabil said, adding that culprits are identified through a period of surveillance of individual carpets and persons claiming them beginning half an hour before the start of prayers.Sheikh Saleh Bin Fawzan Al-Fawzan of the Board of Senior Ulema and the Permanent Committee for Ifta ruled last week that reserving prayer spaces at the Grand Mosque in Makkah or the Prophet’s Mosque in Madina was “haraam”, or forbidden.“It is forbidden to reserve places in the mosques, unless the person has left for urgent reasons and intends to return soon, as otherwise it is tantamount to taking something by force,” Al-Fawzan told Okaz newspaper on Thursday. “It is also forbidden to rent a reserved place, and the authorities should put a stop to this vice (munkar).”
HT: Anouar El Haji at U. Amsterdam
Monday, September 28, 2009
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Four people regularly go to the same mall. One of them drives there every Saturday afternoon, parks in the parking lot, and spends 5 hours leisurely wandering the mall. The other three carpool, each get the same amount of shopping done in an hour and a half, and take up two spaces because they've carpooled in a nice car and believe it's less likely to be damaged that way. Who consumes more public resources? Who will meet with greater opprobrium? (Why do I agree with most people on the latter point, even though I can't remotely rationalize it? Incidentally, if the people paid for parking at what I believed to be a market price, and the group of three rented two parking spots, I would come down firmly believing that there's no moral issue here.)
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