MarsOne Response to Muslim Fatwa

And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the variations in your languages and your colors: verily in that are Signs for those who know. (Quran 30: 22)

The Muslim world has a rich tradition of exploration. The verse from the Quran above encourages Muslims to go out and see the signs of God’s creation in the ‘heavens and the earth’. The most influential example of this was the Moroccan Muslim traveller, Ibn Battuta, who from 1325 to 1355 travelled 73,000 miles, visiting the equivalent of 44 modern countries. Among the countries Ibn Battuta visited were Russia, Afghanistan, India, the Maldives, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and China.

His travels, documented in his famous journal, Rihla, have taught us more about the medieval societies in those countries than dozens of other historical texts put together. In that book, he wrote about seeing the signs of God’s creation wherever he travelled. He told us ‘Never, so far as possible, to cover a second time any road’.

The mission to Mars is a road that has never been walked before, even though the first settlers will be walking in the footsteps of Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, Neil Armstrong, or any of the other great explorers in history.

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Mars One respectfully requests GAIAE to cancel the Fatwa and make the greatest Rihla, or journey, of all times open for Muslims too. They can be the first Muslims to witness the signs of God’s creation in heaven, drawing upon the rich culture of travel and exploration of early Islam.

The lives and journey of the first Mars settlers will tell us more about our place in the universe than any other humans before us.

The Fatwa prohibits Muslims from going to Mars, but not from applying to Mars One's mission or training for the mission. In the next ten years, Mars One is open to working with the GAIAE to assess the risk of the mission as the unmanned settlement is under construction. Hopefully before departure of the first crew, the GAIAE will cancel the Fatwa and support the Mars One mission.

As Ibn Battuta also wrote: ‘Travelling - it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.”

...against voyaging to Mars because it constitutes "suicide."