The Space Between Here and There: The Prophet's Night Journey as an Allegory of Islamic Ritual Prayer

Abstract

This paper commences with an analysis of Qur'an 17:1, the Prophet's alleged night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, which it interprets as an allegory of Islamic ritual prayer. By way of this interpretation, the paper subsequently reviews Islam as a particularly spatially oriented religion and proposes a spatial reading of the word ‘Islam’ itself.