Last year during my first Ramadan in UK, I did not find it surprising at all that there was a dispute over the sighting of moon. That seems to happen just everywhere. What was surprising though was the vast differences in the ending time of Suhoor/Sehri and the Fajr prayer timing. I did not notice this before Ramadan, because there is no strict cutoff under normal circumstances. The differences I’m talking about is not small minutes, but it turns out to be between 50-60 minutes! I didn’t really bother last year and just went with whatever timetable was provided but now I thought of giving the whole issue a quick look.

When exactly does the time of Suhoor end?

“and eat and drink until the white thread (light) of dawn appears to you distinct from the black thread (darkness of night)” [al-Baqarah 2:187]

This verse is quoted extensively everywhere I’ve looked for the precise answer. How it is interpreted is really the matter which is the root of all divergences.  The differences occur in the understanding among the scholars that when exactly does the dawn break. This in turn is described in terms of astronomy. The two major opinions are that dawn breaks when the sun is 15 degrees or 18 degrees below the horizon when dawn breaks. When the sun is between 12 and 18 degree below the horizon, the state is classified as astronomical twilight. So it is agreed upon being the first twilight. Some even argue that nautical twilight (i.e. betweeen 6 and 12 degrees) is the time when dawn breaks visibly to the naked eye.

In Middle-Eastern countries and around that region, this doesn’t matter much because the difference in terms of real time when the 15 or 18 degree state is reached is around 10 minutes on average while in Western countries it crosses the 40 minute mark, at least. And with the days really long in summer, people do care about the extra 40 minutes of time they could get, if possible under religious law. Now if one were to go by the argument of 18 degree below horizon as the first break of dawn then things get even more complex. According to websites that give precise timings of these twilight phases (timeanddate.com is one such website), this 18-degree state isn’t reached in summer in UK (between May and July), i.e. astronomical twilight doesn’t end/begin because the sunset is quite late (around 10pm) while sunrise is also early. This is the case in all Western countries.

No definite answer is found but a very good and informative post on this subject helps understand these differences in more details.

Yet again, I’ll be following the mosque timetable, but there really should be a consensus on this issue.

Update: Another interesting discussion on a similar issue related to Isha timing can be found here