Religion: The Long Fast

In Cairo, taxi drivers stopped their cabs to join the kneeling crowds outside the packed mosques. At Dhahran on the Persian Gulf, the Arabian-American Oil Co. eased its daily work schedules for its fasting, prayerful employees. The Arab cafes of Algiers were empty. In Beirut and Karachi, Western-educated university students put aside their examination papers to meditate on the Koran. Five times a day, from the holy shrines of Mecca to the blackened bamboo mosques of the southern Philippines, muezzins spoke the Arabic words calling the faithful to prayer in a special time...

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