Sunday, November 12, 2017

Calculating Mecca


The freighter Rigel had left Norfolk on Tuesday. May 22, 1979, bound for ports in the Mediterranean.  Toward the end of the second full day at sea, one of the unlicensed crewmen called the bridge with an urgent request.  Speaking to James James, the second mate, he explained that he was a Muslim and needed to face in the direction of Mecca when he said his prayers.  So could the mate please provide him with the compass bearing of Mecca?  James James responded that he would be happy to do it, but he needed some time to work out the calculations, and so he asked the fellow to call back in fifteen or twenty minutes.

Seeing a teaching opportunity in this request, James James explained to Schnickelfritz, the cadet on his watch, what needed to be done.  They of course knew the latitude and longitude of the Rigel’s location, so they looked up the coordinates of Mecca, plugged this data into the great circle sailing formulas, and worked out both the direction of and the distance to Mecca.  James James did it the old fashioned way by using the trig tables in Bowditch and crunching the numbers with pencil and paper.  Schnickelfritz did it the new fashioned way with his calculator.  Both methods produced the same compass bearing and distance.  It proved to be a wonderful practice exercise in spherical trigonometry.  When the devout crewman who requested this information called the bridge again, he thanked James James profusely and expressed great appreciation for his efforts.

At the 8:00pm change of the watch, James James related this experience to me, one of the third mates.  All the mates and the cadet reasoned that as the Rigel crossed the Atlantic, the bearing of and distance to Mecca would necessarily change, and we foresaw the need to provide our Muslim shipmate with updated information.  Furthermore, as we would all eventually take the exams to upgrade our licenses, we saw this as an opportunity to increase our proficiency in the great circle sailings.  This was important material.  Praying toward Mecca notwithstanding, the great circle formulas figured into every transatlantic and transpacific voyage.  So it became the daily drill to practice for both future voyages and future license exams by calculating Mecca.

As it turned out, the request for the compass bearing of Mecca was a joke.  There was no Muslim crewman aboard the Rigel after all.  Some of the fellows below decks thought up this scheme to have some fun at James James’ expense.  They had their laugh, which was harmless, and they unwittingly provided a few young and ambitious officers with a useful study tool.  I certainly appreciated it, for by the time the Rigel reached Gibralter, I had become much more comfortable with the great circle sailings.  I subsequently used this newly developed expertise many times aboard several ships, and I had no difficulty with this material on the license exams for second mate and chief mate.  Many years later, I recall these formulas with fondness.  No doubt these calculations are all done by computers now.  I suppose that’s fast and accurate, but having gone to sea in the old school, I think I would find computerized navigation to be professionally and intellectually unsatisfying.  Sometimes the old ways really are the best ways.

When the Rigel was making this voyage back in 1979, few of us in the West gave much thought to the holy city of Mecca or to the Islamic faith and its adherents.  Furthermore, none of us could have foreseen the bad press that Islam would receive in recent years, or the vituperation that would be cast upon Muslims generally.  It’s very sad when an entire population is blamed for the crimes of a tiny minority.  Popular misconceptions notwithstanding, Islam has a number of uplifting characteristics.

As a belief system, Islam is a large and complex subject with a long and sometimes stellar and sometimes checkered history.  For Muslims who take their religion seriously, Islam is a way of life, a rigorous faith with high moral standards that seeks to uplift its members and bring them closer to God.  In these respects, Islam is not unlike Christianity and Judaism.

A well-composed and ideologically neutral capsule summary of Islam[1] includes a discussion of the faith’s moral precepts.  Some of these are fairly well-known, such as the prohibitions on eating pork and drinking alcohol, the period of fasting during Ramadan, and the five-times-daily call to prayer.  Above and beyond these outward practices, however, Islam requires its members more broadly to lead lives filled with charity, humility, modesty, and reverence; to acquire and value an education; to contribute to the relief of the sick and the poor; to ensure the rights of women and children; to respect the religious beliefs of Christians and Jews; and in general to extend love, kindness, and forgiveness to all people.

My personal experience with Islam has been minimal.  Three of my children, however, have enjoyed some very positive contact with it.  A few examples stand out.

As a teenager, my daughter attended the Academy of Notre Dame, an all-girls Catholic high school in Tyngsborough, Massachusetts.  One of her classmates, Salwa, came from a devout Muslim family.  Salwa was an excellent student who took her schoolwork seriously, got along well with everyone, and never caused any trouble.  She graduated as the valedictorian of her class and received a full scholarship to Boston University.  The latest report indicated that she is now married and studying toward a doctorate at Harvard.

My youngest son visited Israel during Holy Week and Passover in March of 2014.  In Jerusalem on Good Friday, he mingled with Christians, Jews, and Muslims, all of them visiting the holy sites and getting along very peacefully with one another.  Later, when my son was leaving Israel and entering Jordan, there was a mix-up concerning his visa at the border.  Without being asked, a Muslim fellow-traveller intervened and spoke to the border guard on my son’s behalf.  In a few minutes, the visa problem was resolved, and there were no further difficulties.

My oldest son and his wife visited the United Arab Emirates in November of 2014.  They found the cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi spotlessly clean and their streets crime-free.  They saw that every train on the subway had a special car reserved for women and children, not as discrimination against women, but as a courtesy that provided greater comfort and privacy for them.  My son and daughter-in-law also visited the famous Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque.  Comparing it favorably to an LDS temple, they found a strong spiritual presence there and noted that proper dress, reverent behavior, and subdued speech were required of all visitors.

Muslims, Christians, and Jews all believe in a God who has certain expectations of his people, who has set specific moral precepts for them, and who seeks to raise them up to his standards. One of my favorite authors, Rabbi Harold Kushner, makes this point well.  In discussing human frailty, he asserts that when we reach “the limits of our own power, we need to turn to a Power greater than ourselves,”[2] and that “the worship of a God beyond ourselves can help us grow.”[3]  Such spiritual growth is important because “there are standards by which God summons us to live.”[4]  In short, “our behavior matters to God.”[5]  All three Abrahamic religions teach this, and it stands true for everyone everywhere, regardless of denominational affiliation.

These thoughts run a long way from the Rigel’s transatlantic voyage of 1979.  A request that started as a joke first became a training exercise for the license exams and then a springboard for considering the merits of a major religious tradition.  But life is like that, especially life at sea.  Very often when cargo ships leave port, their crews have only a vague idea of where they’re going.  Along the way, schedules change, itineraries are revised, and ships are rerouted.  A ship, like life, can take us just about anywhere.  But of all the voyages we make and of all the ports we visit, the most important ones are those that bring us closer to God 


[1] Two good and readily available sources are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam and https://www.britannica.com/topics/Islam.
[2] Rabbi Dr. Harold Kushner, Who Needs God, New York: Summit Books, 1989, p. 59.
[3] Op. cit., p. 54.
[4] Op. cit., p. 79.
[5] Op. cit., p. 79.

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