A comprehensive project for prayer times in Europe has been successfully completed after years of hard work.
Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the one sent as a mercy to the worlds, our master Muhammad, and upon his family and all his companions.
Finally, the Sunni Islamic centers in Denmark have agreed on unified prayer times, and we hope that they will agree on unified times for the start of Ramadan and the holidays.
This was achieved thanks first to God, and then thanks to the tireless work of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, which has made the issue of prayer and fasting times for Muslims in the West one of its scientific and practical priorities since its establishment, because it relates to two great obligations of Islam, namely prayer and fasting, and because of the many disagreements and confusion among Muslims in Europe regarding this issue.
Therefore, the council researched this issue and issued a number of fatwas and decisions on it. It also dedicated an independent session to it in which scientific research was presented and lengthy discussions took place among the members of the council.
A committee was formed in July 2003 to prepare a hadith-based jurisprudential study and to conduct comparative scientific and mathematical studies between different interpretations and present them to the council.
Then, in 2016, a scientific committee was formed by the Fatwa Committee in Germany, affiliated with the Council, and the Bilal Mosque in Aachen, to study the issue of prayer times and ways to regulate them and reduce the differences in them.
Then, in its twenty-seventh session held in Istanbul, Turkey, from 18-22 Safar 1439 AH, corresponding to 7-11 November 2017 AD, the Council decided to “coordinate with the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs to hold an international conference to study the calendars currently in use, in order to arrive at a calendar that prevents or reduces differences among Muslims, regulates the performance of worship, and makes it easier for Muslims in Europe to live according to their religion.” .
The Council was keen to coordinate with European bodies and entities concerned with the issue of prayer times and representing broad categories and segments of Muslims in the West, such as the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs, the Milli Görüş Foundation, the Paris Mosque, the French Muslim Foundation, the European Muslim Council, the Bilal Mosque in Aachen, and other European institutions.
The Scientific Committee has been working on research and monitoring for nearly six years, and has held seminars in various European countries. The institutions participating in this committee from various countries have presented their calendars and discussed the problems of their application, and have participated in the committee’s dialogues and the evaluation of all proposals. The attendees and participants in the Scientific Committee meetings from various European countries have repeatedly confirmed their willingness to give up their project and commit to the Scientific Committee’s project in order to unite the word and unify the ranks.
The World Conference on Timekeeping was held in Istanbul from 19-20 Safar 1443 AH, corresponding to 26-27 September 2021 AD, with the participation of the President of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, his deputy, his Secretary-General, and a number of members of the Council. About 50 religious bodies and institutions from various European countries participated in the conference.
One of the results of the conference was the emergence of a comprehensive project for prayer times in Europe, and an invitation to imams, directors of Islamic centers and institutions, and all Muslims in the West to work on it and agree upon it, because it is a collective effort undertaken by an elite group of Sharia scholars and astronomy experts with the aim of regulating worship without hardship or difficulty, and balancing between adherence to the Sharia signs for prayer times and the Sharia-based estimation if these signs are absent or disrupted.
As for Denmark, this unification came after several attempts by the Union of Islamic Institutions in Denmark (the Union includes a number of Islamic institutions and centers in Denmark, including Arab institutions such as the Danish Islamic Council, the Hamad Center, the Islamic Cultural Association in Aarhus, the Peace Mosque, the Odense Waqf, and the Scandinavian Waqf recently joined it, and it includes a number of Turkish, Pakistani, and Bosnian institutions, and some members of the Somali community…) to come up with unified times to unite Sunni Muslims in Denmark, especially in the summer months when the legal signs for the time of Isha and Fajr disappear.
It is known that the time for the evening prayer begins with the disappearance of the red twilight and the time for the dawn prayer begins with the appearance of the transverse whiteness on the horizon. These signs disappear in Denmark during the summer months, and the day is much longer and the night is much shorter, especially in the period from approximately May to the end of August.
This union worked to amend the old prayer times for nearly five years, conducting research, study, and diligent work until it produced prayer times in which the Scandinavian Waqf also participated. However, it was God's will that there would not be consensus on them among all mosques and imams, as some adhered to the old times, and some adopted the Turkish times, which increased the confusion and disagreement in this matter.
At the same time, the Union was in contact with the European Committee for Unified Timekeeping, which includes the European Council for Fatwa and Research, in cooperation with the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs, and participated in conferences and meetings.
The work of the aforementioned European Committee resulted in the World Conference on Prayer Times, held from 19-20 Safar 1443 AH (26-27 September 2021 CE) in Istanbul, Turkey. One of the outcomes of the conference was the development of a comprehensive project for prayer times in Europe.
A seminar was held in Copenhagen on Sunday, December 5, 2021, at the headquarters of the Islamic League, with the participation of Islamic institutions, in order to unify prayer times and agree on working with the results of the Istanbul conference.
The new prayer times have been met with great enthusiasm by imams in Denmark, who are working to implement them in order to get out of the state of disagreement and discord that has reached inside mosques and homes. In fact, the matter has reached the point where, within the same house, there is disagreement between members of the same family, and each person prays at a different time than the other, and the same is true regarding the time of the beginning of the month of Ramadan and the day of Eid.
The project, with its jurisprudential and astronomical standards and foundations, is considered an important event for Muslims in the West, contributing to reducing and eliminating discord, and uniting the word and ranks.
The results of this project and the conference recommendations include:
- Creating a webpage to facilitate access to the times as decided by the conference
- This is the website of the Prayer Times Committee: # Prayer_Times for all cities of the world, supervised by the Scientific Committee for Prayer Times in Europe:
- Launching a free mobile application to find out prayer times in global cities according to the standards of the Scientific Committee.
An application has been developed by the Al-Salam Mosque in Aarhus based on the new prayer times for various countries. It includes other services such as determining the Qibla direction and listing the names and addresses of Islamic institutions and mosques in Denmark. It will be updated in a future phase.
The number of participants reached 4500.
The app is called Salaty - The scientific committee organized a number of meetings in Europe to introduce the project and answer questions and address problems arising from its implementation in some regions.
- The conference affirms what the Islamic jurisprudence councils have decided regarding the permissibility of combining prayers during the period in which there is hardship and severe difficulty in performing the prayer according to the approved plan.
- The conference recommends that imams, preachers, directors of Islamic centers and institutions in the West, and all Muslims, unite and speak with one voice, and avoid Muslims having multiple prayer times and systems for calculating prayer in a way that makes people doubt their worship, puts them in embarrassment, and does not reflect the civilized global image of Islam.
The attendees at the conference expressed their sincere thanks to Turkey, its president, government and people, for hosting the conference, and to the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs, the European Council for Fatwa and Research, the Scientific Committee, and everyone who made an effort or spent time to complete this project and bring it to fruition.
In conclusion, we ask God Almighty to reward all those who contributed to the success of this project, whether through effort, time, words, or deeds. We hope that this project will be a catalyst for Muslim unity and solidarity in Europe, showcasing the true, honorable, humane, and civilized image of Islam in the West.
You can download the “Jurisprudential Guide for European Muslims” application.”
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