Times of Salaah

Q: I am sure that the problem I am facing must have been presented to you many times before. However I request you to consider it from my personal perspective only. I have been living in Western Canada for last five years and every year when summer comes it causes me and my family a lot of hardship to perform Fard salah and more recently the Ramadan fasting. This is because of very long days and very short nights. To give you an idea, at the peak of the summer the Fajr time starts at 3 am and Maghrib at 10 pm. This situation remains for almost 6 months before we could sleep for straight seven hours in the night.

This causes a lot of hardship for me in particular because the nature of my work requires a lot of hard work everyday and my mind and body need proper rest to be ready for the next day. It also doesn't allow me and my wife to have normal marital relationship with out missing the Fajr salah. My nature is such that It is very difficult for me to sleep whenever I want to. Also sleeping in parts rather than continuously does not refresh me.

My question to you is that shouldn't we be performing our salah and fast based on some normal time table instead of following the Sun. From normal I mean a time table that allows us to take proper night rest and does not make our fast longer than 16 hours. This I believe is needed because we have to deal with it every year and there is no other solution except that we move to some place closer to the Equator. Which I think would not be right because Islam is for every part of the world and not just for those who have normal day and night cycles. I believe that Islam is the nature and would not put someone in undue hardship beyond one's capacity every year for six months.

I have heard from a few muslim people of Arab origin that they have fatwas to follow a normal time table instead of sunrise and sunset. I have also read that this could be agreed upon by consensus by all the muslims living in such an area. However muslims have been living in my city for many years and I don't think they have ever been agreed to follow a reasonable time table for salah and fasting. The salah time tables followed by our city are all based on local day and night cycles.

I don't have the capacity to bring all the muslims in this community together to resolve this issue. Therefore I request you to consider this as a personal problem and advise me as per shariah.

Q: What is the end time of Fajr salaah? For example, if Sunrise is at 6.35 am, can I perform fajr until 6.30 am?

Q: What is the duration between the end time of Asr salaah and the Maghrib salaah? for example, if maghrib salaah time is 6.45 pm, can i perform asr until 6.30 pm?

Q: If on the prayer calendar sunrise is at 8:38, and one prays fajr and right after the taslim one looks at ones watch and sees that it is 5 seconds are left to become 8:38 i.e. it was 8:37 and 55 seconds. Is the prayer valid? The watch one wears is a Casio Waveceptor which runs always exactly with the atomic clock.

Q: Recently board of imam in Melbourne- Victoria has decided to pray salatul isha before the due time on the basis of convenience for musallis. Not all mosques are doing this. As far as I know two of my neighborhood mosques have started this practice. Like in my closest mosque, Imam saheb has started to pray Salatul Isha on 10:15 PM whereas according to calendar due time for Salatul Isha is 10:33 PM. We pray Salatul Fajar at 4:45 AM. I believe board of IMAMs has decided solely on the basis of convenience so that musallis can have good rest and can come to Fajar prayer in the morning as the night is short during summer times.

As a hanafi follower if I pray with the Jamat at the earlier time, would my salat be acceptable? If not should I stop going to the mosque and pray at home/garage or go to another place to pray?

Q: A book stated:

We find that many books on salat state the ending time of the Zuhr prayer and the starting time of the Asr prayer when the shadow of something is twice itself especially the books which are written by the followers of the Hanafi school of thought.

But this contradicts the above hadith as on the first day Jibreel asked Prophet Muhammad (s) to pray Asr when the shadow of everything was equal to itself. This means that was the end time of Zuhr prayer. And we already know that all the ulamas of the Muslim Ummah agree unanimously that no prayer can be offered before its time.

Imam Abu Hanifa (Rahmatullah Alai) is reported to have changed his opinion before he passed away, and prayed his Asr prayer according to the time stated in this hadith. His two students, Imam Abu Yusuf and Imam Muhammad, used to give Fatwas for the time of Asr prayer according to this hadith, too.

(Fatawa Azeeziah, Fatawa Rasheediah)

Q: I wanted to know what is the earliest duration between exactly sunset and esha (1h15 minutes or 1h 20 minutes)?  The reason for asking this question is that there is a site called islamic finder that has salaah times which seems to be very accurate and wanted to use it.

Q: What is the latest one can start his Salaah in order that the salaah be considered as adaa'? If one starts his Salaah in the Salaah time, and during the salaah, the time ends, does the salaah get invalidated or does it count as qadha?

Q: My question relates to the times of Tahajud. When i was in madressah I was taught that we could read from just after 12am till about 15min before fajar salah. Recently I was told many different things regarding the times. What would be the right time to read Tahajud salah and the cut off time?

Q: What is the time of Zuhr Salaah?