RNS Clips: Hospitals Create Areas for Muslim Prayer -- Beliefnet.com

Janice Neumann's story on Muslim prayer rooms -- not chapels -- in hospitals can be found here.

OAK LAWN, Ill -- The corridor of a bustling hospital is not the best place for kneeling in devout prayer, many Muslim families and doctors have learned. But praying in a chapel comes with its own set of problems -- forbidden pictures and statues of living beings, pews facing in the opposite direction of Mecca, and worshippers wearing shoes on the floor where Muslims kneel to pray. So when a nondescript Muslim prayer room recently opened at Advocate Christ Hospital and Medical Center in this Chicago suburb, families and staff were "flying from happiness," said Refat Abukhdeir, the hospital's Muslim chaplain.