153,000 spaces for Hari Raya prayers at 66 mosques

More Muslims here can look forward to performing special Hari Raya Puasa prayers this year, with over 153,000 spaces being offered, up from last year's 17,192.

A total of 66 mosques island-wide will be conducting the prayers on the morning of Hari Raya Puasa on May 3. This marks the return of such large-scale sessions after two years.

The mosques will conduct two prayer sessions that will require prior bookings, while 15 of them which are expecting bigger attendances will have an additional third session open for walk-ins, the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (Muis) said yesterday.

Bookings for the prayer sessions will open at 10am on April 28. They can be made via the website https://ourmosques.com monspaces.sg/ or the Muslim.sg app, both of which will display the number of available places.

Spaces for Muslim women to join in the prayers will be provided at 60 of the 66 mosques.

"With the wide range of options available, we encourage the community to plan which sessions would provide a comfortable experience for them, and to consider going to less crowded mosques that are located away from neighbourhoods and housing estates," said Muis.

This year's arrangements for the Hari Raya prayers are a marked change from the previous two years. Hari Raya prayers were not held in 2020 as Singapore was still in the circuit breaker period that prevented large groups from gathering. And last year, mosques could hold only limited prayer sessions capped at 100 congregants each.

Each prayer session this year will last 45 minutes. Mosques will take 30 minutes to disinfect and sanitise prayer areas in between.

Muis did not specify the limit of congregants for each prayer session, but The Straits Times understands that it depends on the mosque and its capacity.

The first session will start at 7.30am, followed by the second one at 8.45am. Mosques with the additional session will start the third one at 10am. To ensure that as many Muslims here get to pray, Muis said: "We would also like to urge congregants to cancel their bookings if they are unwell or unable to attend the prayer so that others may get the slot."

Dr Albakri Ahmad, Muis deputy chief executive, said yesterday that mosques are expecting many people to attend the sessions. "We would like to call upon everyone to play their roles to maintain safe distance measures, to put on their masks and to bring their own prayer equipment," he said.