On 8/20/2023 6:46 AM, Physfitfreak wrote:
That's why in Shiite Islam every rule is a derived one.
Yep, including the rule about "cat hair" hehe :)
But the thing is, these rules are sometimes different from Ayatollah to Ayatollah depending on their own works done in Kalam and Akhlagh and
Feghh, plus their own aptitudes and analytical power and understandings
had their imprints on their results. More than one school of thoughts
have developed between them. So a religious Iranian often has to study
more than one Ayatollah's works and ideas before adopting him as a
consultant in life. In my friend's case, his choice was a different one (Ayatollah Montazeri) than his own wife's choice of Khomeyni :) Imagine
the situation... Hahahahaah :)
Imagine the push and pull of how and what to educate their kids with
which would even be possible to have agreements of both parents. So he
had a situation like that also, in his house, which he was dealing with confidence and always with a smile.
Anyway, this friend, was very careful not to pick up cat hair every time
he stepped into my house. Hahhahhah :-)) I should've put this particular
blog under a separate one of its own, titled, "The Proverbial Cat Hair."
Hahahhahhahah :-))
On another occasion which he actually entered, it was to ask me to
calculate the correct direction to conduct one's daily prayer in Dallas
area. For all Moslems in the world, the direction must be towards the
shortest distance to Mecca. I didn't pay much attention to his request
right away until I noticed he had made it at various occasions three or
four times already. Hehe :)
That night he revealed to me that there has been a dispute between the
Shiites and the Sonnis in the local area mosque over the correct
direction. They had ended up praying facing directions that had almost
45 degree difference between them :-))
Hahhahahhah :)
Easy to estimate the degree of tension it'd caused in that mosque,
calling each other "Kafers", etc, a millennium old push and pull about
similar issues between them. This matter was kind of acute and important
to get settled. So I said ok.
Next, on the Sunday morning before even I get out of the bed I decided
to not only calculate that particular direction (which I did right there
in bed), but to write a program in fortran for it which asked for your geographical coordinates to take in, then it computed and gave the
geographic direction that your prayers should be conducted along. A
"general purpose" type of thing. The program form of it, I finished like
a couple of days later.
Then I walked over to his office in environmental science and asked the
friend to somehow use that program on his AT pc. He said he didn't have
fortran compiler on his pc but "could purchase one right away"! I think
that was like another $700 back in those days!. This guy had money to
blow. I said what else can run on that AT. He said BASIC. So later I
went to half-price-books store and surely found a cheap Basic
programming book second hand, studied it and realized how simple it was,
yet had the essential powerful features that a program needs. Took it to
school and converted my fortran program to basic language in no time.
Then we arranged to transfer the program via modem directly to his AT in
school using two of those funky things that had a phone receiver set
downwardly attached to it. We could always borrow them from the computer center.
Then the night of the same day he rushes to my door again with those
heavy AT components in his hands, comes in and sets it up. He needed confirmation on the results of it, quite bad! Together we ran the basic
code on his computer. For the Dallas area sure as hell the correct
direction proved to be somewhere close to the northeast (as I had
calculated myself without the codes) which had scared the bejesus out of
him earlier that evening. He had told the Shiites in the mosque to do
their prayers along southeast direction! (after looking at a flat map
and drawing the shortest distance line to mecca)!...
Still, he implored me to give him more explanation why it had to be
northeast. He played basketball for exercise in a parking lot nearby,
where someone had placed a basketball backboard and hoop and net up
there on the wall. I asked him to bring his basketball ball. He ran and
fetched it in no time. I drew as accurately as possible the locations of
Dallas and Mecca on it using geographic coordinates of the two cities,
then had him look at it from above and various other directions to
guesstimate the closest path between. The way the two cities are
located, does indeed make it a bit tricky. He messed with the ball for a
couple of minutes then used a thread to measure the length of the line
between them going from Dallas toward northeast, kept that length
constant, then moved the other end of the thread this way and that way
to see if he could find an even shorter one to Mecca. There were none!
Scared red-faced, he realized that indeed the path is northeast from
Dallas! He took the ball and thanked and ran out!
Soon of course everybody in the mosque were praying in the correct
direction, Shiites and Sonnis alike :-) Sonnis had had it correct all
the time reverting as usual to their age-old tables and calculations
dating back a thousand years or more. It was the Shiites of Dallas area
who had fucked it up till I wrote that program :)
Now that I think about it, I also remember that I'd even told this story
before in usenet, but most likely in the Iranian forum, not here.
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