Journalism Student Seeks Help with Piece

Salaam Alaikum,

I'm a journalism & International Relations Master's student at New York University. I'm working on a final piece for one of my courses on prayer in Islam, specifically how American Muslims complete their daily prayer rituals given constraints on time and space. Having lived in Morocco for a summer, I know that in Muslim countries the prevalence of mosques and the standard schedules make completing daily prayers relatively easy (compared, I imagine, to the US). I want to examine in my piece how prayer structures this relationship between time, space, and prayer to help propagate better understanding of Islam and its followers.

If anyone can provide any information/anecdotes/material to help with my story, I would greatly appreciate it. The questions I'm specifically seeking answers to are below, but if you have other information you'd like to share, I would certainly welcome it. Even if you'd just like to answer a few of the questions, I would appreciate your help.

1) How do you view the importance of prayer within Islam? How does it fit into the greater picture? What is its significance to you?

2) What is a standard day for you in regards to prayer? How and when (relatively, of course) complete your fajr, dhuhr, asr, maghrib, and isha prayers? I want to know if you pray at home, at a local mosque, or at work. Do you pray at the prescribed times for all or some of your prayers, or do you make them up later?

3) Where are some of the more interesting places you've performed salah? Any interesting anecdotes would be much appreciated.

4) If you are an immigrant or have spent time abroad in a Muslim country, I would love to know how your experiences in performing daily prayer have differed.

If you can answer any of these questions, it would be much appreciated. In order to use whatever you tell me, however, I will need your name (first and last), your age, and your occupation (just generally is fine- student, financial services, corner store owner/operator, etc). At this time, this story will only be viewed by my class and professor (eight total people) and any sources who request to see a copy. If that ever changes, I will mostly certainly speak to all sources to receive permission before it is submitted before a greater audience. Without permission to use your name and information, I would remove your words and information from my story. In order to respect privacy, I therefore ask that anyone kind enough to help me, please email me your responses to my email address [email protected] or private message me within IslamiCity.

Also, given what I'm requesting, I thought I'd let you know a little about me: I am (as I said previously) an NYU Master's student. I am not Muslim, but I am interested in Islam and Arab culture after having studied Arabic language for over three years. I lived in Morocco the summer before last, and absolutely loved it. I am constantly frustrated by the ignorance of so many people about Islam and Muslims, and that is one of the reasons I am interested in covering these issues.

Shukran for reading this post and shukran bizef to all who might email and help me.