Any Muslims considering joining any given Islamic nation’s space program should know that the trip to the Red Planet could also mean a trip to eternal damnation, as reported by the internet news portal Arutz Sheva (Israel National News) on Feb. 20, 2014.
An official Islamic Fatwa (religious ruling) sanctioned by the government of the über-oil rich United Arab Emirates (UAE) decrees that any Muslim seeking to either initially strive to reach Mars or even one day colonize the planet would be considered haram (“forbidden”) under Islam’s sharia law.
Islamic imams and religious scholars led by Professor Dr. Farooq Hamada of the UAE’s General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment (GAIAE) have officially ruled:
Such a one-way journey poses a real risk to life, and that can never be justified in Islam.
By taking such a dangerous trip astronauts were taking unacceptable risks: If they ended up dead, they would suffer the same punishment in the Hereafter meted out to those who commit suicide — namely, an eternity in Hell.
Since its founding in 2008, the GAIAE has issued over 2 million fatwas.
The fatwa comes in the wake of the Mars One program recently reaching out to the entire world for volunteers to take place in their private enterprise endeavor not only to reach Mars by 2025, but to also establish a permanent colony.
The Mars One organization has stated that at least 500 Saudis and other Arabs “are among the 200,000 applicants for a seat on the first Mars missions.”
Nations with at least a sizable Muslim minority of their population that also have official space exploration organizations include the following:
- Algeria
- Bangladesh
- Egypt
- France
- Holland
- India
- Indonesia
- Iran
- Israel
- Kazakhstan
- Malaysia
- Morocco
- Nigeria
- Pakistan
- Russia
- Saudi Arabia
- Tunisia
- Turkey
- Turkmenistan
- United Kingdom
- Uzbekistan
