Re: Deciding on the Moon
Peace sister PyariCgudia
I’m not sure what the links are that people have already given, but hopefully this post will be a complete answer to your query. I have played a passive but key role in timetabling and the calendar system in a set of meetings that I have attended which have taken place in the UK.
The calendar system is lunar cycle based and it differs from Jewish lunar calendar with a subtle but very definite criterion. Here are the issues at hand:
First of all you ask one of the most important questions that are related to the day and age. As the calendar is a point on the last sermon.
“…O Men, the Unbelievers indulge in tampering with the calendar in order to make permissible that which God forbade, and to forbid that which God has made permissible. With God the months are twelve in number. Four of them are sacred, three of these are successive and one occurs singly between the months of Jumada and Sha`ban. Beware of the devil, for the safety of your religion. He has lost all hope that he will ever be able to lead you astray in big things, so beware of following him in small things. …”
http://www.themodernreligion.com/prophet/prophet_lastsermon.htm
We must ensure that we are not falling into this trap. It is the pressures of the Western way of living that is causing us to fault and compromise the regulations of the faith. Just to compare what is being done … read the last sermon on Wikipedia …
you will not find the section that speaks about the calendar … why?
In fact if you browse the whole internet you will find limited places quoting the full last sermon. For some people it seems that this essential information for our times was not worth delivering!
The major culprit is Saudi Arabia. That country is seen as an authority, however, Saudi scholars have issued a fatwa telling all countries not to follow them and to maintain local sightings. I think the reason for this fatwa is because of such tampering that is going on at the governmental level.
Claim: Saudi will always be the first to sight the moon … why?
The reason is obvious they don’t actually sight the moon, proof is that they have a calendar that is predetermined for the next 25 years. They obviously need it to plan their critical meetings with their US counterparts. Hence the insight of the prophet is proving to be true today.
So why do people follow other peoples sightings?
This is a correct but outdated methodology. The supporters of it say, that Muhammad (SAW) in one scenario asked a woman who claimed to have seen the new hilal, she said that she had, the only question he her asked was if she was a Muslim. They made a decision on one persons authority.
This is not adequate for today. Communication has been vastly improved. Global times have to be understood. People are not so clued up and many deceivers are about calling themselves Muslim and we don’t have the guidance of the prophet Muhammad (SAW) today.
To answer your question … If Australia do not see the moon, but Saudi do see it. The way time works on the globe would mean it is impossible to avoid two days of Eid. For when Saudi would notice the moon at Maghrib, the Australians would be coming near to their sunrise time of the following day of the week. They would have to wait until their own maghrib time much later.
Now Saudi you will notice will never be the last to declare the new month. Even if the first sighting should technically occur in Morroco, which is West of Saudi, it would mean that Saudi would have to wait until the next day to sight it themselves. However, this never happens.
This time around when Eid was declared for Friday. The first sighting was made strangely by Saudi, when the only place on the planet that could see the hilal with an optical aid was Argentina. If anyone did Eid for Friday the only country that had a valid reason would be Argentina. The rest of the world would have to wait until the sighting becomes manifest.
The Middle-East bandwaggons! Because Saudi announced a deceptive sighting, much of Middle-East countries announced Eid, but none confirmed a sighting. They were merely following Saudi’s decision based on the single source hadith criterion. Many countries are doing this based on false data, but do not question it, because of the convenience attached to it. They don’t need to alter the pre-printed pre-set calendars.
Brother ahmadjee made a point about India making a sighting and Europe not making the sighting … this is actually very rare. The only case where this is possible is when the southern most tip of India can sight the moon, because of the way the visible parabola forms across the inhabited land mass. The major reason for non-sighting is poor weather conditions.
The general rule is that countries to the East of another location that have sighting the moon ensures that countries West of them will see it too. Countires either increasingly north-West or south-west of a location that has seen the moon have increasingly lower chances to sight the moon.
Read up on the Yallop’s criteria.
All is not at loss … there is a solution to this problem. I’ll post later inshaAllah for now here’s enough for people to mull over.