Alaska Muslims adjust fasting hours during Ramadan

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Working towards Islam in Alaska presents Muslims with distinctive challenges which are totally different from these within the Decrease 48. That is particularly throughout Ramadan, the holy month of Islam.

Throughout Ramadan, Muslims will quick between daybreak and sundown. Nonetheless in Alaska, with the prolonged daylight of spring and summer season — and the early sunsets throughout winter — working towards Muslims are introduced with an unusual fasting wrestle.

“There isn’t any darkness to know when to start your quick and actually to finish it,” stated Heather Barbour, a working towards Muslim in Anchorage.

The lengthy stretches of daylight and darkness impression when Muslims can eat and drink throughout Ramadan. Throughout sure components of the yr when the solar stays out previous midnight, that may trigger a predicament.

“In case you’re telling the neighborhood that they need to quick, , 20 hours, perhaps 22 hours a day for 30 days, not all people locally goes to have the ability to do this,” Barbour stated.

Then in the course of the wintertime, Barbour stated members of the Muslim neighborhood are confronted with the alternative problem.

“The day could be so brief, you would mainly simply have a late lunch and nonetheless quick between daybreak and sundown,” she stated.

To have the ability to correctly quick in the course of the day, Muslims will observe the fasting time in Mecca.

“If the quick is 14 hours in Mecca, we quick 14 hours,” Barbour stated.

Within the early 2010s, the Fiqh Council of North America gave Muslims in Alaska a nonbinding ruling that allowed them to observe Mecca’s fasting hours, giving them extra stability in once they can break their quick.

“When Ramadan falls within the summertime, mainly … we’ll be breaking our quick whereas the solar remains to be up,” Barbour stated. “After which within the wintertime, we’ll be nonetheless fasting whereas it’s nonetheless darkish.”

Copyright 2022 KTUU. All rights reserved.