London : Muslims in Britain will fast for 19 hours a day during the holy month of Ramadan which is considered the most difficult one in years as this year it falls during the summer.
Muslims will therefore only have five hours between Iftar (the breaking fast meal at sunset) and Suhour (the pre-dawn meal). Al Arabiya News Channel reported that the European Council for Fatwa and Research is studying some issues linked fasting in countries where the daytime is long, with the sun not setting in some areas of West Europe until 11:00 p.m. The central mosque in London has published the Ramadan calendar and showed that dawn prayers on day 1 of Ramadan will be at 2:48 a.m. while sunset prayers and time for Iftar will be at 9:25 p.m. Evening prayers will be at 11:03 p.m.
The central mosque in London usually announces the first day of Ramadan and the first day of Eid al-Fitr according to Saudi Arabia which figures out the latter according to Islamic Shariah rulings of the moon sighting. According to the latest official statistics to come out in recent years, the number of Muslims in Britain has exceeded more than 2.5 million, but the figure is expected to have increased in recent years. Sheikh Hassan Halawa, secretary general of the European Council for Fatwa, told Al Arabiya News that he will visit Sweden and some other European areas soon to look at the prayer times and answer some questions posed by Muslims on the issue of Ramadan.
He said it’s not acceptable for Muslims to not fast in Britain due to the length of the daytime, adding that it’s more difficult to fast in some other countries due to heat, for example. Halawa added that fasting hours in some European countries will be even longer than that of Britain. Dawn prayers in the Swedish capital of Stockholm are at 1:50 a.m. while sunset prayers are after 10:00 p.m. which means that fasting will exceed 20 hours there.