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| Midnight Sun in Kiruna (Photo by Helleborus) |
It’s tough enough fasting from sunup to sundown, but what if sundown barely arrives?
Now that many Muslims have migrated to “Lands of the Midnight Sun,” it’s becoming
harder and harder to make it through the long sunlit Ramadan days.
In St. Petersburg, for example, daylight can last as long as 21 hours.
In Stockholm, the sun sometimes sets at 1 a.m. and rises at 3:30 a.m.
Andrew Martin of The
Washington Post reports that Muslim scholars differ in their
rulings about how Ramadan fasting should occur in such regions.
Some “adhere to the sunrise and sunset hours of nearby, more southern cities.” Others “prefer to keep to the long hours of their locale.”
Fasting under those latter conditions can be quite strenuous. One
adherent, from Kiruna in Sweden “where the sun never sets,” stated: I looked at the clock
many times.
Resources
http://wwrn.org/articles/44686/?&place=canada
Copyright August 9, 2015 by Linda Van Slyke All Rights Reserved
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