The call to prayer is a pervasive, comforting echo across the Middle East, but a fatwa by a prominent Islamic cleric urges Muslims to spend less time prostrating and more time working. Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi said worshippers often use prayer to slip away from their jobs longer then they should.

“Praying is a good thing . . . 10 minutes should be enough,” according to an edict posted on Qaradawi’s website. The sheikh’s opinion is shared by many clerics and highlights the dilemma between economic productivity and religious devotion in a part of the world where piety is prized.

Devout Muslims pray five times a day, two of which fall during working hours. They kneel in mosques or unfurl prayer mats and recite the Koran in offices, clogging aisles and bringing work to a halt. The time between ablution -– washing hands and feet -– and a prayer can take 10 minutes, but many Muslim spend as many as 30 minutes on the ritual.

Companies and store owners have been complaining for years about lost labor minutes and inefficiency. The problem goes well beyond prayer time. A recent government study found that Egypt’s 6 million government employees, a massive platoon of bureaucracy, are each estimated to spend only 27 minutes a day working.

If frustrated citizens or customers ask to speed things up, they are met with a sigh, a roll of the eyes and the centuries-old reply: "Inshallah" (God willing).

--Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

Photo: Muslims at prayer. Credit: Associated Press, Hasan Sarbakhshian