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Islamic Calendar – It is all about the Moon, Babe

Islamic Calendar – It is all about the Moon, Babe

Like the birth of a new baby the moon is born to dawn a new Islamic month. But without education little do we know that when the moon is first born it is not visible, totally dark and it takes several hours and almost another day to become visible to the human eye due to astronomical twilight angles and the way the sunlight reflects off the moon surface. It is all in the science you may say but it does not take rocket science to understand this and yet we have people in senior ranks giving decisions based on partial science.

Today in the 21st Century we carry Smart Phones that have more computer technology that once took mankind to the moon and GPS navigation with Augmented Reality (AR) that can tell us precisely how the sun, moon and the stars align and yet we continue to disunite ourselves on one of the fundamental aspect of our religion, the lunar sighting to determine the Islamic Calendar.  I can understand the hadith debate and totally agree that we have to keep going back to that in our decisions (sighting by the eye) but what is the problem using science as a guide in this decision? Why go out searching for the moon when science tells you that it is impossible to see it? I do not see any problem with Islam and Science as Islam is a scientific religion and birth of modern science took place in ancient Islam itself, not forgetting our history. As we gain more knowledge through science it only enhances our belief in Islam and our faith not the other way around.

For a previous Eid decision I rang in to the Mufti’s Radio Program in Sydney and asked how the date for the Eid was determined and he made it clear that it was based on Global Sighting (aka KSA) and yet this year he is using so called scientific date to determine the Eid Day (see his press release below). Can we not be consistent here and use the same determination each year to stop arguments for unity’s sake? I have a slight problem using KSA or Saudi determination as we are in the Southern Hemisphere and in a completely different time zone (AEST is 7 hours ahead of KSA), we do not pray the 5 times Salaat using Saudi time tables, then why should the sun and the moon rise and set based on Saudi times – simply does not happen.

Although Eid may have been announced last Thursday for Sunday (Mufti), here in Canberra we are still awaiting a decision tonite for Sunday or Monday Eid, IA.

Based on Moonsighting_AUS‏ @MoonsightingAUS the Australian Lunar date is also above from their Twitter site. Clearly there are some issues with Eid on Sunday and using uneducated guessing methods. I do not see the end to this Lunar argument and it may continue to the end of times but just wanted to bring out some of the frustrations in this regard but however would agree on the majority decision to determine our destiny as that is the Hadith after all.

Eid Mubarak to you all and God Bless.
Ramadan, 24th June 2017

Muhith Masih (বাবু)

Muhith Masih (বাবু)

IT Technology Specialist with over 30 years of experience in Australian Government Agencies in Infrastructure, DBA, Application and End User Support. Interests in End User and Midrange Computing, Test Automation, AI, Cloud, Edge, IOT, OTT and Cyber Security.


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