Being the highly motivated worker that I am, the veritable font of productivity (Pay no attention to the time stamp on this post!) that sets the pace for everyone around me, it occurs to me after reading this that I might live in the wrong country:

For Egyptian-born Muslim cleric and television host, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, there is a simple answer to Egypt’s productivity problem — pray less, work more.”Praying is a good thing … 10 minutes should be enough,” Al-Jazeera television personality Qaradawi says in a religious edict, or fatwa, published on his website.

Praying five times a day is one of the five pillars of Islam, along with the well-known requirements of making a pilgrimage to Mecca and of giving alms to the poor.

[…]

Society’s increased Islamisation over the past 30 years has already silenced some critics of long prayer sessions.

According to an official study, Egypt’s six million government employees are estimated to spend an average of only 27 minutes per day actually working, reflecting a real problem with productivity.

27 minutes per day… that sounds perfectly sustainable. I can manage that. Show up, spend some time waiting for the bathroom, choose a rather long passage from the Koran as a prayer (say, the entire Koran, perhaps), eat lunch, wash up again, choose another long passage from the Koran (say, the rest of the Koran), go home. I’d probably only be working during the first 27 minutes of the day. Of course, I’m not much of a morning person, so I’d probably make it a point to show up a half hour late if I thought I could pull it off.

There is a price for all of this, though…

Religious beliefs in Egypt are very overt, from the headscarf covering the majority of women’s heads to the bruise on many a man’s forehead showing how piously and how often he has touched his head to the ground in prostration.

So, in order to get out of work, all I have to do is slam my head against the floor as hard as possible twice a day. Let’s think about this… brain damage, or work? Brain damage, or work? Hmm… let’s pray on this…

*WHACK*

Wain bamage, or bork? Wain bamage, or bork?…

*WHACK*

DEATH TO AMERICA!

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