Confused about prayer time in Belgium

21-6-2004 | IslamWeb

Question:

I have a concern about the Fajr and Isha prayer times in Belgium. We are obliged to make the Isha prayer at 01.25 at night and the Fajr 01.55 at night. How can it be, that the Fajr prayer is almost 4 hours before sunrise And the Isha is 3.5 hours after the Maghrib?
I have read, the Fajr is just 2 hours before sunrise and Isha 1.5 hours after Maghrib, to pray Isha before midnight. Do they make the prayer times a mistake? Because it is impossible to stay every day awake from 01.55 after Fajr to read the Quran up to sunrise and then to go to work.
Please, it would be very helpful to have information about the correct prayer times.

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Answer:

Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds; and may His blessings and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon all his Family and Companions.

The Prophet (Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam) illustrated the beginning and the ending of the time of each prayer. So praying a given prayer before its time will not replace the prescribed prayer, and so it is obligatory to repeat it when its time begins. The beginning of the time of Isha prayer is when the red twilight disappears; there is no difference of opinions among the scholars on this issue.

If, in any country the red twilight is delayed even until after midnight, it is still incumbent upon Muslims in such a country to perform prayers on its juristic time as along as this juristic time is evident to them, as it is not permissible for the people of that country to combine Maghrib and Isha prayers because of the delay of the disappearance of the red twilight or because of the night being short.

It is not necessary that the time between Magrib and Isha be one and a half hours, But juristically what has been taken into account is the disappearance of the twilight.

However, we think that there is a mistake in the prayer timetable you have.

You can discover the prayer timetable from our website on the internet.

For instance we checked the prayer time-table in Brussels and it is as follows:

·        Fajr:         4.00 am

·        Sunrise:    4.28 am

·        Dhuhr :   12.48 pm

·        Asr :        5.03 pm

·        Magrib:    8.57 pm

·        Isha:      10.27 pm

And this is on Monday 14/06/2004.

So this confirms that there is a mistake in the timetable you have.

Allah knows best.