By Michael De Groote www.deseretnews.com
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Forget the Empire State building. It is so embarrassingly short. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is “The Tallest Building in the World.”
The skyscraper is 2,716.5 feet tall. It is more than 160 stories high. It is, as the building’s website touts, the “Tallest of the Supertall.”
And now, you can live there in the highest occupied floor in the world. Here is the sales pitch: “The world’s most-prestigious address will be home to a select few. With 900 residences including studios, one-, two-, three- and four-bedroom suites, The Residences at Burj Khalifa are designed for the connoisseur. High living becomes a reality where the homes are located on levels 19 to 108 of Burj Khalifa.”
There is one fact about living in the world’s tallest building that salespeople may not tell Muslims.
Muslims celebrate the holy month of Ramadan by fasting from sunrise to sunset.
The Associated Press reported that Mohammed al-Qubaisi, Dubai’s top Muslim cleric, said Burj Khalifa residents living above the 80th floor should wait two additional minutes to break their dawn-to-dusk fast while those above the 150th floor must wait three extra minutes because they will be able to see the sun longer than those on the ground.
“Burj Khalifa is almost 1 km high, which means people in higher floors can still see the sun after it has set on the ground,” Ahmed Abdul Aziz al-Haddad told Reuters. “Therefore, they can’t break their fast like the rest of the city.”
Al-Qubaisi told AP the decree is similar to those relating to Muslims traveling on airplanes, and harkens back to a time when people living in the mountains broke their fast after those at lower elevations.
