How JAKIM calculates prayer times in Malaysia

A Malaysian prayer timetable is not a set of customs or estimates. Each waktu is a moment the sun reaches a defined position relative to your horizon, worked out in advance by calculation — which is why a printed 2026 timetable can tell you Subuh in Kuantan on a date eight months away, to the minute.

Every waktu is a sun position

Jabatan Mufti Wilayah Persekutuan sets out the classical criteria for each prayer and notes that they have been mapped onto astronomy so they can be determined by calculation (hisab) rather than observation alone.^[2] In outline:

• Subuh begins at fajr sadiq — true dawn, described as the horizontal spread of white light along the horizon.
• Syuruk is sunrise, and marks the end of the Subuh window rather than a prayer of its own.
• Zohor begins once the sun has passed the meridian — its highest point of the day.
• Asar, in the Shafi'i school followed in Malaysia, begins when an object's shadow equals its own length (measured beyond the shadow it already had at midday).
• Maghrib begins when the whole disc of the sun has set, and lasts until the red twilight is gone.
• Isyak begins once that twilight has disappeared, and runs until the next dawn.

Two of those — Zohor and Maghrib — are directly observable events. The rest depend on how far the sun has sunk below the horizon, and that is where a specific number has to be agreed.

The number that changed: Subuh at 18°

Malaysia previously took the start of Subuh as the moment the sun sat 20° below the horizon. That was revised. Following a year of research by JAKIM with specialists from Universiti Malaya, UniSZA and UiTM, the 116th meeting of the Muzakarah of the National Council for Islamic Religious Affairs (MKI), held on 20–21 November 2019, adopted 18° below the horizon instead.^[1]

A smaller depression angle means the sun is closer to the horizon, so the moment arrives later. In practice Subuh across the country moved roughly 8 minutes later than the times people had been using.^[1] If you have an old printed timetable in a drawer, or an app that has not been updated in years, this is the discrepancy you are looking at.

Syuruk and imsak moved too — but not by the same logic

A reasonable follow-up is whether shifting Subuh drags everything else with it. It does not. Syuruk is sunrise, an independent event, and is unaffected by where the dawn threshold is set. Imsak, however, is conventionally counted as a short interval before Subuh, so when Subuh moves, imsak moves with it.^[3]

Why two apps can disagree

Prayer apps that are not built for Malaysia usually ship with a general calculation method — a global convention with its own dawn and dusk angles — and apply it to your GPS position. That is a perfectly reasonable thing to do anywhere without a national standard. In Malaysia it produces times that quietly disagree with the mosque down the road.

The other cause is geography. JAKIM does not compute times from your exact coordinates; it publishes them per zone, and each zone has an official reference point.^[4]Two apps can both be “JAKIM” and still differ if they have placed you in different zones. That is worth a separate explanation of the zones.

Checking a time yourself

• The authoritative source is JAKIM's e-Solat portal, which publishes the times per zone.^[4]
• State mufti departments publish annual PDF timetables you can print, and mosques generally follow these.
• If an app disagrees with your local mosque by a few minutes, check which zone it has selected before assuming either is wrong.