The Muslims of Tromsø: Ramadan in the Land of the Midnight Sun

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/challenges-of-celebrating-ramadan-in-places-where-sun-never-sets-a-982101.html



During Ramadan, Muslims fast until the sun goes down. But what if you live in a place where there is no sunset? The believers in Tromsø, Norway spent years searching for a solution to that conundrum. Now that they have found one, new problems have arisen.

The Muslims of Tromsø: Ramadan in the Land of the Midnight Sun
By Dennis Betzholz in Tromsø, Norway
July 25, 2014 – 04:17 PM

risen.

The seagulls are screeching and the boss is asleep in his camper van when Ahmed Hammadan, working at the market stall set up nearby wonders aloud: Who is going to buy a Norwegian sweater on a day like today? It is a rare warm day in Tromsø, located 344 kilometers (214 miles) north of the Arctic Circle -- a day when shoppers are more likely to buy an ice cream than a wool sweater.

But Ahmed is troubled by a different, much more important question: When will the boss finally wake up? Again and again he glances through the open door into the ramshackle van, but the boss is still sleeping. Ahmed bounces from one foot to the other. He begins speaking faster, his sentences become shorter. He is eager for his shift to come to an end. In eight minutes, the afternoon prayer begins, the Asr, and it takes three minutes to get to the mosque. During Ramadan, praying is just as important as fasting, a meticulously prescribed obligation, no matter what.

It is 3:35 p.m. In two-and-a-half hours, the sun will go down in Mecca. In Istanbul the sun sets in four hours, in Marrakesh, six.

~snip~

There are roughly 900 of them living in the city in Norway's far north, and they have a problem for which the Koran provides no guidance. Traditionally, the fast lasts from sunrise, when "the white thread of dawn appears to you distinct from the black thread" (Surah 2, Verse 187), until sunset. But here, in the northernmost university city in the world, the sun never goes down in the summer. For two months of the year, there is daylight around the clock. For tourists, the midnight sun is a natural phenomenon, something to experience. But for Muslims, it is a nightmare when Ramadan comes at exactly this time of year. Like this year. It is a nightmare that the Prophet Mohammed could not have been aware of, 1,400 years ago in the Middle East.

[Tetris_Iguana]

1. Religion

Unnecessarily complicating reality since 40,000 BCE.