Re: Saudi Declares Eid to Be on Wednesday!
whoever saw the moon on the 14th of zul-hijja wud witness for u that the night had a full moon, hence removing all doubts about the correctness of the date of hajj (and eid)....
so once again, we see all this hue and cry for nothing, and silly ppl continuing their usless (and baseless) practice of accusing saudis to be wrong always....
Peace armughal
I celebrated Eid on Wednesday because I am not one to cause divisions, but I always speak out to what I know is incorrect.
Wednesday was incorrect! Here is how ... You will always look for a FULL MOON to ratify the 14th of any given month, but you see that is exactly the problem. The full moon is half of the Jewish month which begins on conjunction (i.e. no moon) which is called new moon. The Qur'an clearly states that our months start on the Hilal, which are the called New Waxing Crescents. They will in general occur at least a day after conjunction (this is major over generalisation ... it actually varies between 15 hours to up to 30 hours after conjunction).
To determine the half way mark of an Islamic month you will need to look for a slightly waning full moon, because the start is on the hilal. I did it this month and low an behold we were wrong again.
And anyway my question still stands. Why is it that Saudi see the hilal first? .... Actually being part of the in-crowd I know the answer already ... It is because Saudi use a modified approach to determine the new month. They look to see when conjunction is to occur (by calculation) then they determine whether it is occurring before or after 12:00 Saudi time, if it is before then the announce, if it is after then they wait a day.
Our scholars in Saudi are not at fault, well not directly. They are fed information that they 'TRUST' and because of the very liberal requirement of accepting one person's say so, that is enough for them to do so. We can go into this another time and I can justify my point more and related stories of ulema who have spoken to them in person. I am in contact with Mufti Yaqoob Qasmi through my father one of our experts in the UK on the fiqh of timetabling and calendars and have been involved in some high level meetings with them on some occasions.
What's more is that there is a solution ... but we need to be less politically tuned for it to work.