Observance of the Sabbath in Islam.

[Sojourner]

My understanding has always been that muslims do not keep the Sabbath in any formal way, yet Friday is the day where they attend mosque for prayer and religious services. Yet on that day I have noticed that many come directly from work or go to work following the final prayers. This is the information that I found on Wikipedia which gives some interesting insights on why muslims keep Friday as they do. I do find it confusing though in the terms Allah and Elohim and why thier roles are different?

 

"The Quran acknowledges a six-part Creation period (32:4, 50:38) and the Biblical Sabbath as the seventh-day (yaum as-Sabt: 2:65, 4:47, 154, 7:163, 16:124), but Allah's mounting the throne after Creation is taken in contradistinction to Elohim's concluding and resting from his labors, and so Muslims replace Sabbath rest with jumu'ah (Arabic جمعة ). Also known as "Friday prayer", jumu'ah is a congregational prayer (salat) held every Friday (the Day of Assembly), just after midday, in place of the otherwise daily dhuhr prayer; it commemorates the creation of Adam on the sixth day, as a loving gathering of Adam's sons. The Quran states: "When the call is proclaimed to prayer on Friday, hasten earnestly to the Remembrance of Allah, and leave off business: That is best for you if ye but knew" (62:9). The next verse ("When the prayer is ended, then disperse in the land ...") leads many Muslims not to consider Friday a rest day, as in Indonesia, which regards the seventh-day Sabbath as unchanged; but many Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bangladesh, do consider Friday a nonwork day, a holiday or a weekend; and other Muslim countries, like Pakistan, count it as half a rest day (after the Friday prayer is over). Jumu'ah attendance is strictly incumbent upon all free adult males who are legal residents of the locality".

 

[Gail]

I learned something today!

[phkrause]

I always understood, one reason that Muslims don't keep Sabbath is because of the Jews and Sunday because that's taken by most Christian's. So they keep Friday since its very close to Sabbath. Not sure where I heard that???

[Stan]

The Quaran only speaks about the Seventh-day Sabbath, just like the Bible does.

[wendys]

I have a friend who a number of years ago attended medical school at Loma Linda University.  One day while visiting him during his time there, he mentioned that in a meeting he attended they presented an Adventist speaker (I do not recall the name my friend gave me to identify this man) who had lived in a country of the Middle East for some years as a missionary.  The speaker told his audiance that in his own studies of Islam, he had concluded that it was possible that the reason the Muslims worship on Friday was that they rejected the Sabbath because the Jews kept it and Sunday was rejected because that was taken by the Christians, so they chose Friday so as to have a different day.  My friend told me that the speaker said he approached Islamic scholars in Saudia Arabia and asked for a ruling on this, but they refused to do so.  Had they ruled on this and affirmed that his idea was correct, it would have caused an uproar in the Muslim world because it would have supported the idea of the seventh-day Sabbath still being in effect, which they did not want to do. So, this idea has been around for a while.  I just wish I knew the name of the man who presented this information to the audience at LLU medical school.  I was not a student at LLU, so I did not attend.

[TruthSeeker123]

In Sur-at Baqarah 2:63-36 (when Muhammed was in Medina) Allah said the following:

63 And (remember, O children of Israel!) when We made covenant with you and caused the Mount to tower above you, (saying): Hold fast that which We have given you, and remember that which is therein that ye may ward off (evil). 64 Then even after that, ye turned away, and if it had not been for the grace of Allah upon you and His mercy ye had been among the losers. 65 And ye know of those of you who broke the Sabbath, how We said unto them: Be ye apes, despised and hated! 66 And We made it an example to their won and to succeeding generations, and an admonition to the Godfearing.

In my research I found that there is no Qu'ranic reason for Muslims not to keep the seventh-day Sabbath holy. In fact, based on the sentence Allah pronounced on the Jews who desecrated the Sabbath, they should keep it holy. Whether Allah actually turned the desecrators into monkeys or not is up for debate. The Muslim scholars explain that when Allah refers to himself in the first person plural it indicates his magnimity not plurality because Allah is one god.

But attending Mosque on a Friday was a matter of convenience for the Arabs since Fridays were market days and about the only regular (frequent) time that a large number of people together in one place.