their muezzins, relying instead on the call to prayer broadcast by state radio, transmitted electrically through loudspeakers installed on minarets in some Muslim lands, and based on astronomical timetables that do not correspond to the prescribed times on certain occasions and in many countries. We have learned that the dawn call is broadcast approximately fifteen minutes, or even more, before true dawn—the precise difference varying from country to country; that the noon call is fifteen minutes early; the sunset call about ten minutes late; and the night call half an hour late. As you can see, this results in some prayers being performed before their prescribed time, the invalidity of which is obvious.

The reason is clear: ignorance of the Sacred Law and reliance on astronomical science and its calculations, which conflict with the Sacred Law. This has left the muezzins—who may give the call to prayer in their mosques rather than merely rely on the call announced by government radio—entirely ignorant of the prescribed prayer times, which are based on visual observation and which every legally accountable person can readily ascertain, whether illiterate or otherwise, once he has learned them from the Sacred Law. Thus, dawn begins when the white light appears and spreads across the horizon; noon begins when the sun passes the middle of the sky; the afternoon prayer begins when an object’s shadow becomes equal to its length, in addition to its noon shadow; sunset begins when the sun sets and disappears beyond the horizon; and the night prayer begins when the red twilight disappears.

There is no doubt that these times vary according to the regions, countries, and their locations on the earth: on the one hand, according to longitude and latitude, and on the other, according to their lower or higher elevation. This makes it necessary for muezzins to take them into account and be attentive to them. In a large city such as Cairo, for example, dawn breaks in its eastern part before its western part; and the same may be said of all the other times. Indeed, a town may not be as extensive as Cairo, as in the case of Damascus, for example, yet the prayer times of one on Mount Qāsiyūn differ from those of someone in its center, at its mosque—the Umayyad Mosque—or in its Ghūṭah. And yet