Prayer Times in Australia

Muslims and mosques in Australia

At the 2021 census 813,392 Australians, 3.2% of the population, identified as Muslim, up from 604,235 in 2016. Islam is the second largest religion after Christianity, which 43.9% of Australians reported, while 38.9% said they had no religion. In 2016 about 42% of Australian Muslims lived in Greater Sydney, 31% in Greater Melbourne and 8% in Greater Perth, and by 2021 Greater Melbourne alone had 258,250 Muslims, 5.3% of its residents. New South Wales had the highest share of any state, 3.58% in 2016, followed by Victoria at 3.32%, while Queensland and Tasmania had the lowest.

The first Muslims in Australia came before federation. Camel drivers arrived in Melbourne in June 1860 with the Burke and Wills expedition, and in 1866 thirty-one men from Rajasthan and Baluchistan came to South Australia, where they were called Afghans. They carried supplies across the desert. The Great Mosque of Adelaide was built in 1888 and the Broken Hill mosque between 1887 and 1891, both by the cameleers and their descendants, and they remain among the oldest mosques in the country.

Modern communities grew after the Second World War. Lebanese and Turkish families arrived first in large numbers, and in 2001 almost half of the Australian-born Muslims reported Lebanese or Turkish ancestry. Later arrivals came from Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Iran, and Fiji. In Sydney, Lakemba and the suburbs around it form the centre of the Sunni community, and Melbourne also has large Turkish, Afghan, Somali and Arab congregations. The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils appointed the first Grand Mufti of Australia in 1988, and the present Grand Mufti, Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, took office in 2011.

The southern hemisphere changes how the prayer year looks. Seasons are the reverse of Europe and North America, so the longest days, with the earliest Fajr and the latest Maghrib, fall in December and January, and the Islamic calendar moves about eleven days earlier each year, so the long and short Ramadan fasts take turns over three decades. Australia spans three mainland time zones, and daylight saving is observed in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory but not in Queensland, Western Australia or the Northern Territory, so the same prayer can shift by an hour at the border. The start of Ramadan and Eid is announced by national bodies such as the Grand Mufti, but some communities follow their home countries instead, and each mosque sets its own congregation times.

Sources, checked 2026-10: Australian Bureau of Statistics: 2021 Census shows changes in Australia's religious diversity; Wikipedia: Islam in Australia.