Turks to redo fast after Imam’s mixup
A Muslim cleric has mistakenly forced an extra day of fasting on people in a Turkish town by reading the call to prayer five minutes early.
Veysel Mat, the imam in the Black Sea town of Akcakoca, apparently miscalculated the time of sundown on Thursday and read the prayer early, causing people to break fast five minutes too soon, officials said on Friday. The imam read the prayer again after realising his error.
But those who accidentally broke the fast must now refrain from eating for one more day at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, provincial mufti Kemal Turksoy told Reuters.
“Several people have complained and an investigation has been launched,” Turksoy said. “The imam has been reprimanded.”
“I was one of the people who had just sat down for the evening meal when we heard the call to prayer again five minutes later. It was very distressing,” local administrator Ali Uslanmaz said.
Turksoy said it was not clear how many people had been affected by the false call. There are 10 mosques in Akcakoca, a town of 25,000 people, and they are linked by a central broadcasting system.