My Azhan clock is Shafi'i!!

I gleefully bought an azhan clock (a clock that is programmed to sound the call to prayer at each of the prayer times) this week. I can't really afford it, but I can return some of the household stuff I've recently bought for my apartment that isn't necessary - it IS necessary that I find a way to make the prayers on time regularly, and I think this will help. I can't use it until I move but I tested it out yesterday and I'm thrilled. Mostly.

First, I don't understand how, with the advances in audio chip technology (we put them in DISPOSABLE GREETING CARDS, for goodness sake!) we cannot seem to make an azhan clock with good quality sound. These items are not exactly cheap anyway; the investment in a high quality sound chip would not make much of a price difference, I think. But this clock has five different recordings of the azhan, so there are 2 that I can deal with without cringing every time it goes off. So, it's OK, and a significant improvement over older models.

I am quite excited that the clock is programmed for prayer times for over 1000 cities across the world. This means that the nearest large city to me, Columbus, is included. The last clock I tried was older and had only a couple hundred cities, and believe me, New York prayer times do NOT coincide at all with Ohio prayer times!!! (Some new clocks still have only a few hundred cities - how useless unless you happen to live in a major city!) The Columbus times are within a couple of minutes of the times published for Athens. That's well within acceptable ranges, and I can further customize by shifting the time the azhan sounds by up to 30 minutes in either direction, if I want even more precision.

HOWEVER, the Asr (midafternoon) prayer time is set according to the Shafi'i (and perhaps Hanbali and Maliki?) ruling, which puts it about an hour earlier than the Hanafi ruling...and guess what, I've decided to follow the Hanafi school of jurisprudence (I'll explain more about that at another post). It's (the clock is) not changeable. And that's a bit odd considering that the Hanafi school is the largest one, and there are so many features on this clock already that it would have been a simple matter to add a "Hanafi Asr time" setting to the clock. From what I've seen, there aren't any U.S.-available clocks that offer this. Why is this?? So I'll be praying Asr according to the Shafi'i ruling, which does not affect the validity of my prayers but does annoy me. Which, for those of my friends who have heard my diatribes about the particulars of the Shafi'i school for the last couple of years, should be quite amusing.

ALSO, the clock has a nifty "qibla finder" icon - that is, you place the clock so that the face is facing north, and you have a handy little graphic that points out which way you should face in prayer. The clock doesn't have a compass built in, it has the correct direction for prayer for each city programmed in with an arrow to show you the way. One problem with this handy feature. The majority-opinion for the direction of prayer in most of North America is NE, as the shortest distance between here and Mecca, taking into consideration the curvature of the earth. Simply put, Mecca is, on a flat map, very east and somewhat south of Ohio, but on a globe, the "fastest" route (as a plane would fly) is NORTH east, following the curve of the earth around. There is a minority opinion that has the proper prayer direction for North America as southeast, using the flat-map model (it's not like my prayer has to "arrive" in Mecca as quickly as possible, it's not an airplane and in fact doesn't "go" to Mecca anyway since God doesn't "live" there, so there's some logic to this position). It does not in the end matter which direction you choose as long as it's what you believe to be the "best" way to face Mecca, which is all that is required. But most still pray to the NE and many will argue for the correctness of that direction.

So, oddly, the qibla finder on my clock follows the MINORITY opinion on proper direction, which is even odder than not having a Hanafi-Asr option.

Does that make my clock Hanbali?