In the interests of brevity....the Editor in Chief (Debbie) has shortened the following post.

Many religions use prayer beads. As explained below, you will even see Christian based faiths have a reference for prayer beads. Prayer beads are very popular and common over here. Sheikhs give them to us as gifts. Here in Iraq they are used literally for prayer andd to recite the 99 names of God, in addition to praising God. Looking over the list of names, I see many similarities to our Christian faith. So place your order now before time runs out!


Prayer beads
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Prayer beads or Rosaries are used by various religions such as Islam, Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Bahá'ís and Greek to count the repetitions of prayers, chants or devotions a number of times; also, for meditation, protection from negative energy, for relaxation and even to relieve stress.
Using Prayer beads as a tool of meditation is as old as human history. It is not a coincidence that Prayer beads are present in almost every religion.
Prayer beads may have physical, metaphysical and psychological affects on their users. Since the beads are fingered in an automatic manner, they allow the user to keep track of how many prayers have been said with a minimal amount of conscious effort, which in turn allows greater attention to be paid to the prayers themselves.
There are three widely accepted uses for Prayer beads

1. Repetition of the same devotion a set (usually large) number of times. This is the earliest form of prayer beads (the Japa Mala) and the earliest Christian form (the prayer rope). This is also the type in use by the Bahá'í Faith

2. Repetition of several different prayers in some pattern, possibly interspersed with or accompanied by meditations.

3. Meditation on a series of spiritual themes, as in e.g. Islam or Catholicism.
Prayer beads made with precious stones have attracted people with their colors and charming gloss since ancient times. Since then, each stone has gained special meaning. For instance Native Americans believed that the bones of the people wearing Turquoise wouldn’t be broken and they used to engrave this stone onto their shields during war. It is also known that Turquoise was also very important for Aztec culture where the stone was believed to give protection from evil effects. Again, in Native American culture it was believed that the Agate was good to quench thirst and used for this purpose.
In ancient Greek culture, it was believed that Amethyst would prevent people from becoming drunk and goblets were made of this stone.