🇨🇺 Havana

Havana uses the Islamic Society of North America method (method 2 in our calculator), a 15-degree Fajr and 15-degree Isha convention applied here as the closest geographic and institutional fit for a Caribbean capital that lies just south of Florida. Cuba has no national Islamic authority that prescribes a fixed convention, and the small Cuban Muslim community has tended to follow North American conventions rather than the European 18-degree MWL standard, partly through proximity and partly through the practical influence of US-based diaspora resources. The 15-degree solar depression behaves cleanly at Havana's 23.1°N latitude — the city sits just inside the northern tropics and seasonal twilight swing is modest year-round. Apps set to MWL will produce slightly earlier Fajr and later Isha, with differences on the order of ten minutes at the twilight prayers. Dhuhr, Asr and Maghrib are unaffected by method choice.

Havana's prayer times shift only modestly across the year because the city sits at 23.1° north, just inside the Tropic of Cancer where day length stays relatively stable. In late June, Fajr is calculated for around 04:30, sunrise comes near 05:50, Maghrib falls around 19:25 and Isha sits near 20:45, giving roughly fourteen hours between Fajr and Maghrib. By late December, sunrise slips toward 07:05, Maghrib arrives around 17:50 and Isha follows around 19:10, compressing the gap to about ten and a half hours. The full annual swing is roughly two hours — much smaller than at high-latitude European or North American capitals. Havana lies within the hurricane belt and has periodically observed daylight-saving time, with rules subject to change, so visitors should ensure their apps use the correct current America/Havana offset.

Havana's Muslim community is small and mostly Cuban-convert in character, with the broader national Cuban Muslim population estimated at perhaps one to two thousand people, most concentrated in the capital. The community grew through a slow process of conversion from the 1980s onward, drawing on Cuban Catholic and Afro-Cuban religious backgrounds, alongside a small migrant cohort of foreign students and embassy-affiliated families — historically including Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian, Pakistani and West African residents. The community is overwhelmingly Sunni and has been organised principally through the Casa de los Árabes in Old Havana, a colonial-era institution under Cuba's Office of the Historian that has long served as a cultural hub for Arab heritage. The 2015 opening of the formal Mezquita Abdallah, funded with Turkish support, gave the community its first dedicated mosque after decades of relying on a converted apartment.

The Abdullah Mosque (Mezquita Abdallah) on Oficios Street in Old Havana, opened in 2015 with Turkish funding, is the principal Friday gathering point for Havana's Muslim community and Cuba's first formal mosque. The compact prayer hall, near the Plaza Vieja in the colonial heart of the city, serves a small congregation that combines Cuban converts, foreign students and diplomats, and a smaller migrant cohort. The Cuban Islamic Community Centre and the prayer space at the Embassy of the State of Palestine host smaller community gatherings. Khutbas are typically delivered in Spanish with Arabic recitation, reflecting the heavily Cuban-convert character of the community and the dominance of Spanish in everyday life. Friday prayer at the Abdullah Mosque usually begins between 13:00 and 13:30. Visitors planning to attend should note that Old Havana's tight colonial streets can make the mosque entrance difficult to locate without local directions.

Prayer times differ between cities because they are calculated from the apparent position of the sun, which depends on a city's latitude, longitude and the date. Havana sits at 23.1°N, 82.4°W in the America/Havana time zone, just inside the Tropic of Cancer where twilight resolves quickly and daylight stays relatively stable across the year. Two cities at very different latitudes — say Havana at 23.1°N and Toronto at 43.7°N — see twilight unfold over very different durations, so Fajr, Maghrib and Isha can sit substantially apart between them, particularly around the June and December solstices. Even cities at similar latitudes diverge if they fall in different time zones or follow different calculation conventions for the Fajr and Isha twilight angles, such as ISNA's 15-degree depression versus the MWL 18-degree standard.