Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com
Published - Saturday, October 20, 2007
Muslim prayer rules may lead to marks
As we become a global society, courtesy of electronics, we “Westerners” are becoming more aware of other cultures’ ways. Recently, awareness of the Islamic religion(s) has increased.
As I was dissecting older issues of the International Journal of Dermatology, I extracted two articles related to Muslims’ prayer requirements, written by Muslim dermatologists.
One, from Saudi Arabia, described prayer marks as darker, rougher, thicker skin areas, which develop over extended periods of time from pressure and friction on bony prominences when Muslims pray. Praying five times a day for five to 10 minutes is mandatory for all Muslims older than 10.
Raka, the integral unit of each prayer, requires four postures: standing (Waquf), bowing (Ruku), prostration (Sajda) and sitting (Julus). Additional prayers (Nafel) can be performed to accrue more spiritual reward.
The study catalogued prayer marks on the forehead, knees and feet tops in 349 Muslims (260 males and 89 females) and a control group of 24 non-Muslims, mostly Christians from the United Kingdom, U.S., India and Phillipines.
As expected, none of the control group had prayer marks. If one bunch is a control group, does that mean the other one is an out-of-control group? In the Muslim group, the prayer marks were darker and bigger with longer praying periods and those older than 50. Skin biopsies showed changes from chronic friction and pressure.
The second study done in Durban, South Africa, by Muslim dermatologists, looked for foot and nail fungus in 78 regular adult Muslim male worshipers from five mosques, compared to 72 non-Muslim male adult administration office workers at King Edward VII Hospital. The fungal prevalence was 85 percent in the mosque group and 41 percent in the office group. Fungi were cultured from carpets and floors of all five mosques.
Prayer is preceded, according to the article, by ritual cleansing (ablution) performed in bare feet in a specially designated communal area. And, prayer is also performed communally on a hall carpet.
“It is well established that communal facilities play an important role in the transmission of superficial fungal infections,” according to authors from other studies. Their point was this is a previously unrecognized problem in this community. Their treatment suggestions are similar to other communal environments, such as gyms, spas, etc.
During a trip to Jordan and Egypt, we were mystified by the mysterious forehead markings until they were explained to us. These medical observations by medical Muslims of their spiritual brethren may be of interest to us as their brothers and sisters in a shrinking world.
Just today, a mother talked about her daughter who married a Spaniard, and another daughter, who was going to marry a Taiwanese man. And, one of our sons actually married a girl from Portland, Ore., would you believe?
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