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How Indonesians in Nordic regions cope with longer fasting days
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A Muslim woman prays. (Shutterstock/-)
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s a Muslim living in Kerava, Finland, which on average sees 21 hours of daylight per day in the summer, Indonesian citizen Rika Melissa says she often has days when she reaches her weakest point.
“In Ramadhan, I am usually woken at 2 a.m. and get back to sleep again after the morning prayer. Around 8 a.m., we have to wake up to take care of our young children. Because they have holidays in the summer, they don’t go to school and daycare is also closed, so I have to accompany them playing all day,” Rika wrote on a blog post last year.
“During the night, I usually just give them a tablet PC to play with since I feel so tired. My critical time is usually between 1 and 3 p.m. and another one from around 7 to 9 p.m., when the children are at their most noisy playing keroncong [traditional Indonesia music] and my energy has evaporated somewhere.”
(Read also: Longer fasting challenging but doable: Indonesians living abroad)
When she thought she couldn’t handle fasting for the whole 21 hours, Rika opted to follow Mecca times instead.
“The Imam of the Indonesian community in Finland believes that the right way is to do it according to local time, although there are other fatwas that allow Muslims in the northern hemisphere to fast for a shorter period during summer time and choices vary within the Indonesian community in Finland,” she told The Jakarta Post via email. “Some people follow Turkish time, some choose Mecca time.”
Since Ramadhan follows a lunar calendar, it shifts every year and the length of the month differs each year. When it coincides with the summer, it means 18 or more hours of abstaining from food and beverages.
“In my opinion, [following non-local times] just violates the definition of Ramadhan fasting in Islam, so I [decided] to stick with Netherlands time,” said another Indonesia Muslim abroad Alkindi, who last year spent the holy month in Enschede, the Netherlands, where he was doing his master's degree. (No, the Netherlands is not a Nordic country, but it's close.)
During 18 hours of fasting, he claimed that he didn’t have many problems since he wasn’t used to eating much except for at dinner. But he also admitted that sometimes he had his lowest times.
(Read also: This summer, long fasting days mostly affect sleep schedules of Indonesians living abroad)
“By early evening, maybe around 6 to 7 p.m., I started to feel tired and energy-depleted. What I usually do is find another distraction, anything. I guess the trick is to keep myself busy.”
Another expatriate Indonesian, Retno Aini, who resides in Tromsø, Norway, faced a similar issue when one of the Muslim communities in the city asked for a fatwa from the ulama in Saudi Arabia for "time discounts" for fasting.
“Based on the ijma [consensus of opinion of the] ulamas, it was decided that when sunset times could not be observed, prayer times [and fasting time] would follow Mecca time. Please note that the fatwa regarding prayer times [following Mecca time] is only implemented in the months during the midnight sun [May to mid-August] and the polar night [24 hours of darkness, from late October to mid-January] seasons,” she explained. (kes)
