All religions, when some element of their faith becomes impossible or untenable, either adapt or perish. I can see a lot of interesting adaptations by Muslims to the destruction of Earth, so I'll toss out a few. [b]Visiting Mecca[/b] 1. Visiting Mecca is done in emulation of the Prophet; no actual, physical journey is necessary, just the rites done as a symbol of understanding and solidarity. A VR program or other recreation is distributed to allow Muslims to spend time performing the pilgrimage. 2. Peforming symbolic, local rites, the Muslims who take this option are similar to the above, but end it by firing a re-entry-resistant canister containing written prayers towards Mecca. 3. Rather than journeying to Mecca, artifacts from Mecca are stacked out in an open recreation of the city, out in the Martian desert. Pilgrims journey there, emulating the journey and action. [b]Ritual Fasting for Synths[/b] 1. It is simply considered that abstaining from food is an act of understanding; by abstaining from the pleasure of food, synthmorphs and infomorphs are always considered fasting. As long as they don't taste digitally simulated foods (outside of allowed times), they are considered to fast. 2. If you can provide a synth with all five senses, it should not be difficult to provide the sensation of hunger. Muslims in synths or infomorph states simply run QuickFast© and endure the sensations of a growling stomach, procedurally generated so no two fasts are the same. 3. Muslim Brothers and Sisters with Ghostrider Modules are expected to allow their disembodied or robotically bodied fellows to ride with them, and give them access to their sensorium, allowing them to endure the same sensatiosn and temptations. [b]Laws[/b] 1. Gender laws, along with many others, are abolished. Many scholars realize the Quran's laws were edicts for its time, not for all time; Mohammad even gave instructions on how contradictions were to be dealt with, indicating that, while the spirit of laws and their divine benefactor are eternal, the laws themselves are not. Laws are examined, analyzed for reasons, and these reasons are used to make judgements, rather than arbitrarily cleaving to the written word. 2. Gender laws depend on the origin of the mind. A sufficiently wise and respected Imam or Cleric can, however, declare an ego has sufficient "maleness" or "femaleness" to be called one or the other; these definitions are more or less arbitrary. While more liberal Muslims are content to let people be what they declare themselves to be, many hardcore conservative Muslim groups cling strictly to such rulings. 3. Gender laws depend on the body. If a body is hermaphroditic, systems are developed to determine its "maleness" or "femaleness" as noted before, and these are, again, largely arbitrary. It is not hard to imagine a few geneshapers deliberately crafting increasingly androgynous forms to deliberately perturb particularly conservative Muslims.

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There are Christian transhumanists around, and while I haven't met any yet, I could imagine Muslim transhumanists too.

According WTA membership survey 1% of their members declared Islam as their faith. http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/tabid/68/id/9930/Default.aspx

Tyrnis wrote:

Keep in mind that Islam had to adapt and to be very flexible in order to survive where Christianity and Judaism largely fell by the wayside -- it's likely very, very different from the Islam that exists on Earth today, even if it does hold fairly controversial views by EP standards.

All in all, given the relatively large number of more liberal Christians versus the relatively smaller number of liberal Muslims, it strikes me as unlikely for Christianity to disappear. Jews, meanwhile, will do what they've always done in the case of a disaster: Move somewhere small and isolated and fight like hell to defend it.

I'm sure many "old school" Muslims would argue the kinds people we're describing here are not Muslims. It's a No True Scotsman argument. Christianity will change by the time of the Fall, and likely after it, no doubt. However, that means nothing as to the diminishment of it as a whole. While there will be many lay-practitioners who just do the "I do it because my parents did it" routine, there will be many true believers as well who follow it as a calling.

Helios_Five wrote:

I was thinking of playing a muslim character in eclipse phase. The clash between old beliefs and a vastly changed world is an interesting challenge. How could Islam have adapted to the transhuman world and the fall?

Before you start modifying Islam I'd recommend writing down the things that attracted you to this aspect of your character. Keep those things immutable in your world. Only rationalize and change the things that allow your character to remain interesting to you.

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Most of the central tenets of the faith, the five pillars would be able to survive. The biggest problem is the fifth pillar, The Hajj or pilgrimage. How would you travel to Mecka when earth is in quarantine and crawling with plagues, nanoviruses, grey goo and other horrors unleashed by the TITANs? Not all muslims visit Mecka. In poor villages it is common for them to pool their cash together and send a representative of the village on the pilgrimage. Could such a journey be possible? It could definitively be an interesting plot hook.

It's only been 10 years since the fall. It's entirely possible that this has not been resolved. Read the Barsoomian portion of Sunward closely. Muslims have been on Mars for decades mostly as poor people. It's unlikely that most tribes were able to pay the freight to send a rep back to Mecca more than once a decade. Unfortunately, the Islamic holy site on Mars is now inside the TQZ.

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Sawm, the ritual fasting during the ramadan also presents a challenge. If you inhabit a synth body that does not need sleep, water or food how do you fast? Or if you are a infomorph? Infomorphs could perhaps give themselves the illusion of needing food in a VR world. Synthmorphs may switch to being Infomorphs during Ramadan in order to remind them of the needy who lack a physical body.

I'm no islamic expert but I have been to a few ramadan dinners (Good food!) and nothing I've read or experienced leads me to believe that people undertake Sawm for the sake of Sawm. In the first place there are several types of Sawm; ut Taam; (Food fasting) is the most common and associated with Ramadan but Maal; (money fasting) and Kalam; (silence) might be as important. In the second place; fasting of itself is not the point. (or so I've been told) During ramadan fasting serves to focus the mind on spiritual maters as opposed to maters of the flesh like eating. If you're assuming that inhabitation of a synth morph is not a sin in the Islam of EP, you might also assume that alternate Sawm for that morph have been adopted. To my heathen mind, Sawm ul Kalam; (speach/silence/), a prohibition on mesh use seems particularly apropos as a serious fast to be undertaken by any Muslim in AF10 especially a synth that would be so reliant on the mesh as part of existence.

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Other problems are how you deal with the laws. The Sharia is composed of precepts set by the Quran and examples shown by the Prophet Muhammed in the Sunnah. Of those two the Quran is considered the highest authority. Some laws make a difference between men and women. Women only receive half the inheritance of a man as an example. This becomes a problem when people can switch bodies at will. Of cource we could do away with all of this by just concluding that Islam in Eclipse Phase would be hopelessly bioconservative. I find it more interesting to imagine how EP Islam would have adapted without having a Bioconservative meme.

There's no doubt in my mind that inflexible sects of any existing religion do not survive as anything other than congregations of Brinkers. The Suni sect seems particularly poised to adapt with their acceptance of Consensus, Juris and flexible Reasoning in consideration of Sharia. It's unlikely that observance of Islam in EP dictates a strict bioconservative life. Arabic being the most common language in EP points to the probability that Islam is the most populous religion in the system. Many of the issues with living a transhuman life in AF10 have allready been worked out by muslims on Mars over the prior 40 years. I like to think that in many ways religions have benefited from leaving two melenniums worth of baggage and bullshit on Earth. 90% mortality among an entrenched clergy can't hurt. Possibly the fact that there is no Mecca, no Jerusalem, no East, no West, the fact that roles are not forced by morphology but determined by the spirit of the mind can actually relieve some dogmatic stress on these institutions and allow them to grow spiritually unhindered by purely temporal concepts.

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Christianity will change by the time of the Fall, and likely after it, no doubt

Or it may very well disappear altogether. 100 years is a lot of time, and with radical changes in society, as well as shifting of Christian religion to more poverty stricken groups, it might not survive such thing as the Fall.

I've thought for a long time that it would be awesome to run a campaign where the PCs are helping some enterprising Imam carry out the last Hajj, a death-defying journey through the quarantine and back, to bring back a piece of the holy rock so that a new center of the Islamic faith can be established. I mean, what could be a more epic premise for an adventure?

Extrasolar Angel wrote:

Or it may very well disappear altogether. 100 years is a lot of time, and with radical changes in society, as well as shifting of Christian religion to more poverty stricken groups, it might not survive such thing as the Fall.

Something in me says no. Significant portions of the middle-classes of the world still retain Christian traditions, and, before the Fall, the first ones off-world were the poverty-stricken; they sold themselves as indentures to hypercorps to get off the poverty-stricken Earth.

Read Bruce Sterling. Allah, the compassionate, the digital.

Arenamontanus wrote:

One interesting sf take on Islam was "Written in Blood" by Chris Lawson, where street genescribes sold gene therapy that puts the Quran into the genome. Very good story about Islam, faith and science. Incidentally, I just noticed this site: http://islamscifi.com/ Which reminded me of the fun take on Islamic jurisprudence in Stross' "Accelerando" (one of the characters is an imam).

Cool idea, but translating the Koran is a violation of the Koran. You could, however, inscribe it in nano-type and implant it that way.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:

Cool idea, but translating the Koran is a violation of the Koran.

It is discussed in the story, and the encoding is intended to be a faithful rendition of the true Arabic version. Whether it actually is, is one of the points of the story. As for getting artefacts from Mecca, it might be a fun adventure. Especially since moderate Muslims will no doubt point out that the whole endeavour is close to idolatry - the function of the hajj is not physical presence to a rock. Bringing it back does not truly matter. Might actually make a great ongoing argument during the adventure (which itself is a kind of hajj) - with the right players and GM it might be interesting religious role-playing.

delroland wrote:

I would think that there would be several Shia-founded corps, being that they (IRL) control(led) a significant portion of the fossil fuel market. Most Sunnis on Earth, not being as wealthy as the Shiites, would unfortunately perish in the Fall.

Isn't it the other way round? Of the OPEC nations only Iran and Iraq have Shia majorities and the only other country in the Gulf with a majority is Bahrain.

Camillus wrote:

delroland wrote:

I would think that there would be several Shia-founded corps, being that they (IRL) control(led) a significant portion of the fossil fuel market. Most Sunnis on Earth, not being as wealthy as the Shiites, would unfortunately perish in the Fall.

Isn't it the other way round? Of the OPEC nations only Iran and Iraq have Shia majorities and the only other country in the Gulf with a majority is Bahrain.

My point is not that the majorities are Shia, but rather that those in power are Shia and the majorities are Sunni.

Tyrnis wrote:

delroland wrote:

Camillus wrote:

delroland wrote:

I would think that there would be several Shia-founded corps, being that they (IRL) control(led) a significant portion of the fossil fuel market. Most Sunnis on Earth, not being as wealthy as the Shiites, would unfortunately perish in the Fall.

Isn't it the other way round? Of the OPEC nations only Iran and Iraq have Shia majorities and the only other country in the Gulf with a majority is Bahrain.

My point is not that the majorities are Shia, but rather that those in power are Shia and the majorities are Sunni.

Which countries are you thinking of? Because aside from Iraq and Iran, I can't think of any where the Shia are the ones in power -- it's generally Sunni governments with (often poorly treated) Shia minorities. Even in Bahrain, which is predominantly Shia, it's the Sunni who have control of the government.

I was thinking specifically of Libya at the moment; perhaps I assumed too much. Regardless, whichever religious group is in power in oil-rich nations will have a significant corporate presence in A.F. Earth. Any minorities or powerless majorities will be eaten by nanoswarms.

By my count (reviewing the population and language data in Sunward), Arabic is the fourth most common language, behind English, Mandarin and Hindi.

I'm not sure it's necessarily valid to assume that, in EP, speaking Arabic is very strongly correlated with Islam. Obviously, there's grounds there for *some* speculation, but we can well imagine a much less than 1:1 matchup. I wish there was more *time* in the setting. In Dune, we can happily accept the Orange Catholic faith as utterly unrecognizable… but it's been millennia. (The less said about Dune Judaism, the better.) Similarly, I'd be happy to expect religions in EP to be all but completely unrelated to their 2010 namesakes; that is, sharing name only.

Hehe, well, two things. :) First, I was just comparing the settings. IMO, religion (period) is much less interesting than… anything; but I fully understand that it's fun for others. Second, those fun ideas you suggest are stepping rapidly into 'all but unrecognizable' to me. Heh. I just meant that it's rough squeezing the apparently necessary changes for entertainingly-weird scifi religion into roughly 10 years. Even if we borrow time pre-Fall, it's short. I agree with you that it's not *too* short for anything to happen, it's just short.