It was a warm June day in a northern German village, and I was talking to a Syrian friend outside a local shop. I had just bought some ice cream and offered to share it, but my friend refused. He was observing Ramadan: no food or drink until after sunset.
“If you had found asylum at the Arctic Circle instead of Germany,” I asked, “would you have starved by now?” It wasn't an entirely academic question. In our village on Germany's Baltic shore, the sun doesn't set in summer until around 11 p.m.
My Syrian friend chuckled at the question about the Arctic Circle — where the summer sun never fully vanishes — but insisted: The law is the law; it's what the Prophet Muhammad commands.
But wouldn't the prophet be content if you observed, say, Damascus time? I wondered.
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