How Do You Find out the Fasting Times for Ramadan?

One thing I've been asked occasionally by people from the West revolves around how I know the timings to start/stop fasting. Well here in Qatar there are five main ways:

1) listen to the announcement called from the mosques. Not too difficult as there is usually a mosque within hearing range wherever you are in Doha, but you still need to know approximately what time or else you might confuse it with a standard call to prayer.

2) listen to a local radio station, they will interrupt their programming for the announcement

3) get hold of timetables, like the one shown below, either online or available in booklets from various places.


Both of these were given to me by my Qatari friends. The times to start fasting and the times to stop fasting are the bolded columns.

You need to make sure that your timetable is for the area you live in as the sun sets at different times in different areas. For example in Kuwait the sun sets 10 minutes later than in Qatar because Kuwait is slightly further west and also further north.

4) On local television they will show a scene of some soldiers firing an artillery shell, which indicates the sun has set


5) Finally, you can listen for the artillery shell yourself, they really do fire one. I'm not sure where in Doha they do this but I think it's near the Corniche as I recall last year if we were breaking the fast in a restaurant near the Corniche we could hear the shell being fired. One of my Qatari friends said we might go there one evening to watch.

Firing an artillery shell to indicate that you can stop fasting seems to be a common thing in the Gulf. I watched the firing of the artillery shell on Kuwait television two days ago and there were dozens of citizens around watching. (Kuwait does a live broadcast of the firing of the artillery shell so many of the citizens wave Kuwaiti flags to the TV cameras).

5) websites like islamicfinder.org also list the prayer times.

Oh, and another question us Westerners ask is what would a Muslim do about fasting if they live far enough north that the sun doesn't set in the summer? Or if they were in outer space? It's pretty straightforward really, it's another place and align your fasting with the timing there. My understanding is that Mecca is a favorite choice, for obvious reasons, but I don't think it's a requirement. But many Muslims who live in northern countries just go by the local time and thus have an exceptionally long fast. I spoke wants to a Qatari who said that when he lived in France he would have to fast until the sunset at sometime after 9pm. Man, that would be tough. I'll settle for breaking the fast sometime after 6.

_