Muslims worldwide to mark the start of Ramadan on Thursday

[Little Tich]

Source: Yahoo! News / AP

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Muslims around the world will mark the start of Ramadan on Thursday, a month of intense prayer, dawn-to-dusk fasting and nightly feasts.

Muslims follow a lunar calendar and a moon-sighting methodology that can lead to different countries declaring the start of Ramadan a day or two apart. However, this year religious authorities in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Indonesia and most other parts of the world announced based on their sightings of the moon that daily fasting would begin Thursday.

Authorities in Pakistan have yet to announce the sighting of the moon.

During Ramadan, observant Muslims abstain from eating and drinking from sunrise to sunset for the entire month. A single sip of water or a puff of a cigarette is considered enough to invalidate the fast.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/muslims-around-world-mark-start-ramadan-thursday-105924869.html

[etherealtruth]

1. Ramadan Mubarak

[starroute]

2. And right at the summer solstice this year, which makes it really rough

It's especially hard for Muslims living in places like England, where at this time of year there's more than 18 hours of visible light in London and almost 20 hours in Scotland.

[cosmicone]

5. Travellers are exempt

I have found that one can always check into a hotel and order room service during the day -- even in Saudi Arabia

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

6. There's a Fatwa for that

e.g. in Norway, if the "day" is more than 20 hours, there's an option of using the time of day in Mecca to control the fasting.

Another guide was created for an astronaut on the International Space Station, where there are umpteen day/night cycles in a 24-hour period.

Since Islam has no "pope", there are many, often conflicting, guides for Ramadan in polar regions. Depend on your local imam to sort it out.

But, yes, it's difficult. Last year, I played tennis with a muslim and he wouldn't drink any water because it was daylight. Given the heat, he was going to have a loooooong day. I felt bad drinking water in front of him, but I'll take hydration over empathy.

[starroute]

7. And the people with 19 1/2 hour days are really resentful about it

I remember a long article about it a year or two ago. The problems arise when you start with something that's assumed to be "God's law" and then begin adding man-made amendments to cover cases that were never envisioned by the actual very human originators.

It's kind of like Scalia's Constitutional originalism, that winds up being "the Constitution means whatever I want it to mean."

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

8. They're resentful now, but ...

... in a few years, Ramadan will occur when daylight is 4 1/2 hours. And the folks with 4 hour days will try to ignore the formerly-merciful fatwa.

The "old-time" Muslim leaders probably never envisioned daylight swings near the polar regions. They probably thought those Swedish viking traders were just telling tall tales.

[azurnoir]

3. Ramadan Mubarak

[cosmicone]

4. Ramadan kareem n/t