Ecuador's Muslim history begins with Arab traders, many from Ottoman-era Lebanon and Palestine, who settled in Quito, Ambato and Guayaquil after the First World War. The community remained informal for decades until the Khalid ibn al-Walid mosque was founded in a private Quito apartment in 1991, followed in 1994 by the Centro Islámico del Ecuador, the first Muslim organization to gain formal government recognition. Guayaquil's own Centro Islámico Al Hijra, established in 2004 by an Ecuadorian, a Pakistani and an Indian co-founder, now serves a smaller coastal congregation.
Because Quito sits at less than a fifth of a degree south of the equator, its day length changes by only minutes across the entire year — Fajr and Isha shift far less between January and July than they would in almost any other national capital on this site. What does change is elevation: Quito sits roughly 2,850 meters up in the Andes, in sharp contrast to Guayaquil's sea-level coastal setting, which is part of why each city's schedule is calculated from its own coordinates rather than shared.
Ecuador's two main congregations, in Quito and Guayaquil, developed independently of one another and of any single international network, so both generally rely on the Muslim World League's widely used angles rather than a distinct national convention.
Quito lies almost exactly on the equator, so day length there stays close to twelve hours in every season, unlike higher-latitude capitals where prayer times swing by an hour or more between summer and winter.
Elevation changes the visible horizon slightly, and Quito's roughly 2,850-metre Andean setting is a sharp contrast to Guayaquil's sea-level coast, which is one reason the two cities are calculated separately rather than sharing one schedule.
The Centro Islámico del Ecuador, founded in Quito in October 1994, became the first Muslim religious organization formally recognized by the Ecuadorian government.
Yes — Friday congregational prayer replaces Dhuhr and is held close to the calculated Dhuhr time, with each center, whether in Quito or Guayaquil, setting its own khutbah start.