• Ramadan in north Sweden — no dusk, no dawn

Muslims living in northern Sweden – facing 21-hour fasting in endless summer days – have received new guidelines for when they can start and break the fast during the holy fasting month of Ramadan in cities where the sun never sets, the TT news bureau said.

“When we didn’t have so many Muslims in Sweden this wasn’t a big issue. However during the last few years it has been a problem,” Imam Mahmoud Khalfi from the Islamic association told TT.

Since there is no central authority in Sunni Islam that could issue a definite religious ruling, or fatwa, Muslims in the north are using at least four different timetables to break the fast.

Now the European Council for Fatwa and Research has issued fresh guidelines. They have urged Muslims to follow the sun in Stockholm or in Malmö, the Local.se said.

In Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar, adult Muslims abstain from food, drink, smoking and sex between dawn and sunset.

Muslims make up some 200,000 of Sweden’s nine million people, according to semi-official estimates.