Of the five Pillars of Islam, prayer is the practice that organizes the daily life of Muslims and the Muslim community. Muslims believe it is an obligation of the faith to pray five times each day, the timing of which is dependent on the position of the sun in the sky.
5 Daily Prayers
For Muslims, the obligatory five daily prayers are a formal process of standing, bowing, and prostration while reciting verses from the Quran. While the heart of the prayer is recitation of the Quran in the Arabic language, many Muslims also pray in their native language during certain portions of the prayer. Muslims understand the prayer to be an act of worship, but it can also be likened to meditation or mindfulness practice. For many Muslims, the five minutes or so of each prayer throughout the day represent an important break from the busyness of their daily routine.
Accommodating Muslim Prayer
The Muslim prayer is an important religious belief for Muslims and is easily accommodated at work, school, or other settings. Muslims require a reasonably clean and quiet place for the prayer, which only takes about five minutes. During the prayer, a Muslim will attempt to focus on their prayer, doing their best to ignore distractions around them.
When accommodating the Muslim prayer at school, work, or elsewhere, it is important to note that the clock times of each prayer will change from season to season. For example, the sunset prayer begins immediately after sunset, or 4:34 PM in December and as late as 9:04 PM at the summer solstice in June. Prayer schedules based on zip code can be found at many places online, such as Islamicfinder.org.
Main Muslim Holidays
There are two main holidays which all Muslims around the world celebrate. The first of these is called Eid Al-Fitr (Arabic for festival of Breaking of the Fast), or the “Small Eid.” This Eid occurs immediately after the end of the Islamic month of Ramadan. The celebrations surrounding this important holiday begin with a prayer service in the morning, followed by one or more days of carnivals, visiting friends and family, and sharing food together.
The second major holiday is Eid al-Adha, often called the Big Eid. This Eid falls on the 12th month of the Islamic calendar every year, immediately after the Muslim Pilgrimage [hajj] to Mecca. Like Eid al-Fitr, Muslims begin the holiday with morning prayers, and spend the day in worship, charity, gift-giving, and visiting.
Eid al-Adha commemorates the willingness of the prophet Abraham to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God. Muslims believe that God instead gave Abraham a ram to sacrifice, so Muslims today commemorate the event by sacrificing an animal on Eid al-Adha and donating a portion of the meat to the poor and needy.
The above map with prayer times for Minneapolis and St. Paul can also be viewed and downloaded here.
Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha are determined based on the lunar calendar and expected to take place about 12 days earlier every year.
| Year | Eid ul-Fitr | Eid ul-Adha |
| 2017 | Sunday, June 25, 2017 | Friday, September 1, 2017 |
| 2018 | Friday, June 15, 2018 | Tuesday, August 21, 2018 |
| 2019 | Tuesday, June 4, 2019 | Saturday, August 10, 2019 |
| 2020 | Saturday, May 24, 2020 | Friday, July 31, 2020 |
Many websites provide detailed daily, monthly, yearly prayer times. For example: Islamic Finder
The early and late afternoon prayers may occur during a typical school/work day in the Twin Cities. The table below shows the times these prayer periods begin at in various days of the year.
| Date | Dhur (Early Afternoon prayer) | Asr (Late Afternoon prayer) |
| Jan 15 | 12:23 PM | 2:39 PM |
| Apr 15 | 1:14 PM | 5:00 PM |
| Jun 15 | 1:14 PM | 5:23 PM |
| Sep 15 | 1:09 PM | 4:38 PM |
| Nov 15 | 11:58 AM | 2:22 PM |
