With no fajr adhan, am I allowed to eat 10 minutes after fajr time for a nafl fast? [closed]

Question

There is no adhan for fajr here, so am I allowed to eat 10 minutes after fajr time (until the dawn appears) in nafl fast?

I am secretly following Islam it is very hard for me to do fast.

Answer 1

When it comes to acts of worship like prayer and fasts which are either performed as obligatory/fard or optional/nafl/sunnah acts. There certainly might be some slight differences in the practice, but the timing for when one should start fast and when one should break it is not one of them, as it is declared in the Qur'an:

... And eat and drink until the white thread of dawn becomes distinct to you from the black thread [of night]. Then complete the fast until the sunset. ... (2:187)

and the prophet () explained it:

" Until the white streak of the dawn becomes distinct from the dark streak" (ii. 187) Adi b. Hatim said: Messenger of Allah, verily I keep underneath my pillow two strings, one white and the other black, by which I distinguish night from dawn. Upon this the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: Your pillow seems to be very large. For the word khait implies the blackness of the night and the whiteness of the dawn. (Sahih Muslim and sahih al-Bukahri)

as the companions where apparently unclear about the meaning as this hadith suggests.

Al-Nawawi (may Allaah be pleased with him) said:

Abu ‘Ubayd said: The white thread is the true dawn and the black thread is the night. (source: islamqa #37790)

dawn is al-fajr as-sadiq (the true fajr) and is further explained in the same fatwa as follows:

Dawn is called the white thread because the first thing that is seen of the dawn is a light in the sky that looks like a thread along the horizon, stretching from right to left, from north to south. Then it continues to increase until it spreads through the whole sky.

So you must start fasting once the time of fajr enters and you should stop fasting or break your fast once the time of maghrib has entered. If you have a trustworthy schedule or prayer chart you should try to stick on it. If you have no access to a chart, nor have a watch on which you could read time (if you know it), nor have the possibility to hear the adhan, then and only then you may eat and drink until you are sure that the fajr as-Sadiq time has come:

Among the rulings that are derived from this verse is the ruling that if a person is unsure whether dawn has broken, he may carry on eating and drinking until he is sure of it, because Allaah says “until the white thread (light) of dawn appears to you distinct from the black thread”.

‘Abd al-Razzaaq narrated that Ibn ‘Abbaas said: Allaah has permitted you to eat and drink so long as you are not sure. Al-Haafiz said: its isnaad is saheeh. (source: islamqa #50120)

And this is not related to adhan as adhan can be done right before praying any fard prayer (no matter if it is actual or the prayer time has already entered) -this hadith seems to support this and I know of a similar practice especially in Ramadan and in some cities some mosques by default pray with a certain delay and call for the prayer (once again)- and it is not prescribed to perform it when the time enters, however this is more or less a custom.