Did You See the Moon? I missed Eid prayers last week. It was not intentional. I tried to go; in fact I rearranged my office schedule so that I could attend without impinging on my work too much. But I fell victim to a rift within our local area on what day Eid should be. The Masjid that I rely on was using astronomical calculations to arrive on the choice of last Tuesday as the true Eid. However, it is more convenient for me to offer Eid prayers at another Masjid closer to my work. When I arrived there early on Tuesday morning I saw an empty parking lot, and realized that my Eid prayer hopes were doomed.
The Islamic lunar calendar relies on the sighting of the earliest possible crescent moon to date the start of each month. In pre-modern times, slight differences had no serious impact on daily life, and communities that were geographically separated could disagree on the exact date with no real consequence or even knowledge of their disagreement. But with today’s instant communication, we all know what everyone else is doing. The moon sighting issue has thus become a contentious and hotly debated topic.
The Saudis, with their guardianship of Mecca, and their purported religious expertise, have carried great weight on the calendar issue. They have consistently refused to use astronomical calculations, and still rely on visual sightings confirmed by two “trustworthy” witnesses. As a child, I was always perplexed at how Ramadan never seemed to last 30 days in Saudi Arabia but would make it the full 30 in California. I figured we just had bad eyesight. In this current month, the Saudis claimed the crescent moon was sighted one day earlier than astronomical calculations would say was possible. As a result, while much of the Muslim world took their cue from Mecca and had Eid on Monday, others who relied on calculations celebrated Eid on Tuesday. This split decision, and its local consequences, even received extensive coverage in the Los Angeles Times.
For the American Muslim community, the calendar issue is becoming more and more serious. To rent or reserve large public spaces for Eid prayers in advance is difficult when the precise date cannot be fixed until the last moment. Many of us would like to take the Eid day off, but cannot schedule in advance for the same reason. If the Islamic calendar is to function as a real global calendar, and not simply a local method of holiday determination, then we are going to be forced to use calculated dates.
But even then it is not so simple. The ability to see the moon depends not just on the moon’s position in the sky, but also on the observer’s position. At any given longitude, the crescent moon may be visible to someone at the equator, but not be visible to another observer closer to the pole. Also, atmospheric conditions can change a theoretically visible moon into one that is not. And even more importantly, the moon moves in its orbit a little bit every day. This means that the moon may not be visible when the sun sets in Indonesia, but by the time the sun sets in California on the same day, the moon has moved into a position that the crescent can now be seen. So which standard do we use? That of an observer at Djakarta, Mecca, or Seattle?
Calculations are already used in another area of Islamic religious practice, namely, the timing of Ramadan fasts and prayers. For those who live in extreme latitudes, such as Scotland, there is tremendous variation in the length of the day through the seasons. At the extreme, the sun doesn’t ever set above the Arctic Circle in the Northern Summer. Muslim scholars have ruled that Muslims living above 45 degrees N latitude (about where Seattle is), should use the Fajr and Maghrib times for 45 degrees N to perform their fast. Interestingly, about 10 years ago, a Saudi was sent into orbit on the American Space Shuttle, and he performed his Salats according to calculations, based, I believe, on prayer times in Mecca. So the Saudis do concede the need to calculate in that context.
As Mecca is the center of the Muslim religious universe, it does make sense to use it as a guide. I would support an Islamic consensus to use calculated dates based on a Meccan observer to set our calendar.
Last modified on