prayer times

Assalam Alaykum

I have a problem.....I had been going by the prayer times in my town that islamicfinder.org displayed and just now I went on islamcity just by chance and it has completely different times.

Why would that be?:?

Asalamu Alaikum,

I think you should continue to follow islamicfinder since you have been following it already.

Inshallah it is ok to have little variations between the time... different mosques do it at different times.

For example, if you're living in a muslim country and have about 3-4 mosque in your neighborhood, they all wont call the Adhaan at the same time because the speakers are quite loud and everyone can hear it in the neighborhood. They intentionally set different times... so the Adhans are few minutes apart from each other so they are not overlapping.

Also, if you're running late at suhur time... the later adhaans give you more time to eat lol

Allah knows best.

W'salaamz,
Hamid

wa alaikum assalam wr wb,

Prayer times are based on the sun's position in the sky. There are a few different methods for calculating these times. Islamic Finder uses the ISNA/North American calculations as it's default, while Islamicity uses the Muslim World League (I think).

The difference in times is the result of different groups recommending different twilight angles for calculating when fajr and isha is. ISNA uses 15 degrees for fajr and isha, where as the MWL uses 18 for fajr and 17 for isha. These are degrees the sun is below the horizon.

Since we here in north america are up a wee bit higher, the smaller degree below the horizon works well. MWL and others were calculated with countries closer to the equater in mind.

I'd just stick with the north american calculations, since that's where we are *grin*