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29 March 2024

Praying in wrong direction for 10 years

Residents of a Saudi village discovered they had been praying in the wrong direction for 10 years. Picture for illustrative purposes only. (SUPPLIED)

Published
By Staff

Residents of a Saudi village have just found out that they had prayed in the wrong direction in a mosque for nearly 10 years after it was built by a benefactor.

The mosque is only 20km from the holy city of Makkah, the direction in which Muslims pray all over the world, and the destination of millions of Muslim pilgrims.

“For 10 years everyone had been praying towards the mihrab in the mosque, which points northeast, whereas it should point to the southeast,” local resident Abdul Rahman Faraj told the Saudi Gazette newspaper.

“Then we discovered the mistake so we changed the position of the carpets,” said the resident of Hada’ Al Shamaliya.

The paper said there was another reason for the concern of the villagers - the mosque is getting old and could collapse on them.

“The mosque is falling down,” said Jaber Abdul Rahman, another villager. “The sanitary fittings are old and the building as a whole needs repair work. Bits of the ceiling occasionally fall on worshippers."