{"id":435,"date":"2013-06-23T08:44:52","date_gmt":"2013-06-23T12:44:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/?p=435"},"modified":"2013-06-23T08:44:52","modified_gmt":"2013-06-23T12:44:52","slug":"ramadan-moonsighting-a-lesson-in-divide-and-conquer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/2013\/06\/ramadan-moonsighting-a-lesson-in-divide-and-conquer.html","title":{"rendered":"Ramadan Moonsighting; A Lesson in “Divide and Conquer”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Every year it\u2019s the same thing.\u00a0 An epic battle rages on the internet between two different factions of Muslims.\u00a0 I\u2019m not talking Sunni vs Shia here \u2013 I\u2019m talking about The Moonsighting Wars.<\/p>\n

Okay, here\u2019s the thing.\u00a0 The Muslim religious calendar follows the lunar cycle.\u00a0 We keep track of the moon and count the new month when the first sliver of a new moon is sighted every month.\u00a0 I have a little calendar thingy on my iPhone.\u00a0 It tells me that today is the sixteenth of the month of Sha\u2019abaan.\u00a0 That means Ramadan is just a couple of weeks away.<\/p>\n

The Islamic Society of North America<\/a>, ISNA, set out an email yesterday saying that they are\u00a0 using astronomical calculations to determine that the fasting month of Ramadan will begin on Tuesday, July 9th.\u00a0 Oh, cool, you might think.\u00a0 I know exactly when the fasting begins so I can make sure I have my shopping done!\u00a0 And they also announced that Eid, the day that marks the end of fasting, will be on Thursday, August 8th.\u00a0 Excellent, you think.\u00a0 Now I know exactly what day to ask off from work!\u00a0 Ah, if only it were that simple.<\/p>\n

See, in the early days of Islam, we didn\u2019t have a method to calculate the movement of heavenly bodies.\u00a0 I mean, remember, back in the sixth century most philosophers and \u201cscientists\u201d thought that the earth was the center of the universe.\u00a0 So the only way to for sure know that the new month had arrived was to use the highly technical method of standing out in the middle of a field at night and looking up.\u00a0 And indeed, this is what we are instructed to do by our beloved Prophet Muhammad, may Allah\u2019s peace and blessings be upon him:<\/p>\n

\u201cDo not fast unless you sight the crescent, and do not break your fast till you sight the (following) crescent.\u201d<\/em> (Al-Bukhari, Vol. 3:130).<\/span><\/p>\n

So for centuries, that\u2019s what we did.\u00a0 As the end of the month approached, Muslims would look to the skies.\u00a0 If a trustworthy person noted that the new moon was born, we followed that and everyone fasted, and then at the end of the month everyone stopped fasting.\u00a0 If it was cloudy, we counted the days from the beginning of the last new moon up to thirty and then stopped fasting.\u00a0 Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.<\/p>\n

Then, this nasty thing called technology got in the way.\u00a0 Once we figured out that the Earth was \u201can utterly insignificant little blue-green planet far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm<\/span> of the galaxy\u201d (go read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy<\/em>), we started learning more about the universe around us.\u00a0 Now, in the year 2013, sophisticated instruments and computers can calculate to a farthing the potential for moonsighting anywhere on the planet.\u00a0 If you go to moonsighting.com <\/a>you can see a really neat graphic overlay of a map of the earth that shows the mathematically calculated potential for seeing the new crescent.\u00a0 (On a side note, according to this website today is the\u00a0fourteenth <\/em>of Sha\u2019abaan and not the sixteenth, so you can see we\u2019re already on the road to trouble here). \u00a0And according to them, the earliest possible sighting of the crescent moon anywhere on earth is on July 8th.\u00a0 But that is out in the less-populated and less-Muslim-populated islands of Polynesia, so if no Muslims sight it out there, then it doesn\u2019t count, so that\u2019s why we\u2019ll probably start fasting on the ninth.<\/p>\n

A large faction of Muslims does not accept calculations, so around the world people wait for a physical sighting of the moon.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not just that the calculators calculate and the waiters wait.\u00a0 In the midst of calculating and waiting (calculations are already done and waiting leaves you with a lot of time on your hands), people talk.\u00a0 They light up the internets with impassioned defenses of their particular point of view. They flood their walls with articles and videos.\u00a0 The word \u201cbida\u2019ah\u201d is bandied about.\u00a0 Bida\u2019ah is innovation, and while innovation in science is cool, innovation in religious matters is strictly not allowed.\u00a0 So those who use calculations are considered by some to be reckless innovators who are committing a huge sin. They in turn accuse the waiters of being primitives who are slaves to the letter of the law, unable to properly understand the path that led to the calculations.\u00a0 And it goes back and forth, back and forth.\u00a0 And back in the real world, often in the same town, you have Masjid A beginning their Ramadan fast on one day, and masjid B beginning their fast one day earlier or later.\u00a0 And sometimes, there\u2019s even a Masjid C that ignores both of them and starts on a totally different day than either of them.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been Muslim for twenty years and it has been this way as long as I can remember.\u00a0 It seems the vitriol has gotten worse, though.\u00a0 If anyone wants to know why the Ummah, the community of worldwide Muslims, is divided, you need look no further than this issue.\u00a0 I mean, if we can\u2019t all get together deciding when to fast, then how can we expect to deal in a unified manner with issues such as subjugation of women, warfare, education, and eradicating poverty?\u00a0 Quite simply, we can\u2019t.\u00a0 Until a single strong leader comes to knock the Ummah in the head and make us listen, we\u2019ll continue to squabble and snipe over this issue and many others.\u00a0 Me, I\u2019m going to follow my masjid, which follows ISNA, and fast along with the vast majority of Muslims in my community.\u00a0 BUT <\/em>I\u2019m not going to condemn or criticize those who follow the physical sighting of the moon.\u00a0 They may be right and I may be wrong.\u00a0 It\u2019s not something to tear apart the community over.\u00a0 If you want to have a fight worth fighting, let\u2019s argue over the relative merits of Arab vs Pakistani cuisine.\u00a0 Now, there\u2019s <\/em>an argument I could get into.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every year it\u2019s the same thing.\u00a0 An epic battle rages on the internet between two different factions of Muslims.\u00a0 I\u2019m not talking Sunni vs Shia here \u2013 I\u2019m talking about The Moonsighting Wars. Okay, here\u2019s the thing.\u00a0 The Muslim religious calendar follows the lunar cycle.\u00a0 We keep track of the moon and count the new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[109,14,51,3,111,108,107,110,4,52],"class_list":["post-435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-islam-2","tag-calcuations","tag-eid","tag-fasting","tag-islam","tag-isna","tag-moon-sighting","tag-moonsighting","tag-moonsighting-org","tag-muslims","tag-ramadan"],"yoast_head":"\nRamadan Moonsighting; A Lesson in "Divide and Conquer"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Every year it's the same thing.\u00a0 An epic battle rages on the internet between two different factions of Muslims.\u00a0 I'm not talking Sunni vs Shia here - I'm\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/2013\/06\/ramadan-moonsighting-a-lesson-in-divide-and-conquer.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ramadan Moonsighting; A Lesson in "Divide and Conquer"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Every year it's the same thing.\u00a0 An epic battle rages on the internet between two different factions of Muslims.\u00a0 I'm not talking Sunni vs Shia here - I'm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/2013\/06\/ramadan-moonsighting-a-lesson-in-divide-and-conquer.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Muslimah in Progress\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-06-23T12:44:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nancy Qualls-Shehata\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Nancy Qualls-Shehata\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/2013\/06\/ramadan-moonsighting-a-lesson-in-divide-and-conquer.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/2013\/06\/ramadan-moonsighting-a-lesson-in-divide-and-conquer.html\",\"name\":\"Ramadan Moonsighting; A Lesson in \\\"Divide and Conquer\\\"\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-06-23T12:44:52+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-06-23T12:44:52+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/#\/schema\/person\/6218cbef696f8f6c933831dfcc2096b9\"},\"description\":\"Every year it's the same thing.\u00a0 An epic battle rages on the internet between two different factions of Muslims.\u00a0 I'm not talking Sunni vs Shia here - I'm\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/2013\/06\/ramadan-moonsighting-a-lesson-in-divide-and-conquer.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/2013\/06\/ramadan-moonsighting-a-lesson-in-divide-and-conquer.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/2013\/06\/ramadan-moonsighting-a-lesson-in-divide-and-conquer.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Ramadan Moonsighting; A Lesson in “Divide and Conquer”\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/\",\"name\":\"Muslimah in Progress\",\"description\":\"I'm an American Muslimah of a certain age with some pretty strong opinions. 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