The Ulema has taken the right decision we in India follow the same tradition.

Jazak allah

Nice sentiment, but it ignores reality. One of the reasons why the counting method has become popular in various parts of the world is simply due to the fact that weather and climate don’t always allow for easy moon sightings. I used to live in Arizona, where the weather is probably very similar to that in the KSA: crystal clear skies at night for about 300 days of the year. Extremely easy to sight the moon in those types of conditions. Now I live in tropical SE Asia, where it’s very frequently cloudy and/or rainy throughout much of the year. For example, the past few days, it’s been extremely rainy; there’d have been no chance to sight the moon today (if such a sighting were needed) because of the extreme overcast and rain we had all day. Singapore uses (and probably the other Muslim countries in this region, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, also use) the counting method. Nothing’s going to change that here; the sighting method is impractical due to the climate. A fatwa like the one you quoted above will be quietly ignored in SE Asia. In which case, the ummah, though one, will use whatever method is most practical for them, regardless of what the others think.

I think if reliable computational methods had been available in the 7th C, he would have accepted them happily. He was working with the best technology available at the time—the human eye. Had something better been available, he would have gone for it.

The lack of uniformity in establishing the dates upon which months started was of little concern at the time. And when Muslim communities had little communication, when transportation between places could take days, weeks, months, or even years, the ‘slippage’ of a day or so meant very little. Now, when you can be anywhere in the world within 24 hours in reality, and connected within seconds in virtuality, a day or so matters quite a bit.

Further, differences lead to discord, fitna, and we know how he felt about that.

If there is, in fact, a global umma, then it should behave as one.

My opinion.

Ok, I will take your method. Just get us one standard. Go get’m

One way would be, for Saudi (and other Muslim) scholars, to consider that the method of observation, and that of calculation, are two equivalent, acceptable, methods to determine the beginning of ramadan, according to the shariah.

This would be a major progress, by admitting that both approaches are satisfactory, instead of saying that those who use calculations are violating the shariah.

This situation wouldn’t be unusual, because in Muslim law there are many “rites” (Abu Hanifa, Malek, Shafi’i, Ibn Hanbal, shi’ite, etc.) which state sometimes incompatible things about the same issue. But each conclusion of a rite is applied in one region of the world, without describing other solutions as contrary to shariah.

But, I do not feel happy with such a conclusion, for the following reason:

If both approaches are satisfactory, in terms of the shariah, and if one of them is unquestionably more efficient in other respects than the other, (by making it possible to plan events in advance, for example, which is the reason of being of a calendar, by definition), then one should use the method that is “more efficient in other respects”. There are also many Islamic law principles which would apply to this case and would justify this choice.

That’s also an application of Occam’s Razor.

So, in the end, I think I will stick with the conclusion that the method of using calculations is preferable to that of observation, since Muslim scholars declare that the calculations’ method is compatible with the prescriptions of shariah. And I would consider that all Muslims in the world should use it. That’s what Egyptian cadi Shakir said in the 1930s.

Here in the USA, my wife lived on the same street for 25 years. There were Pakistanits on the same street. They begun and ended Ramadan on different days for the entire 25 years. You can call 3-4 different mosques in our area and they are always divided.

The situation becomes even more complex when people confuse tradition and religion. They attribute their traditions to the prescriptions of religion, giving them a character of “sacredness” to which they aren’t entitled.

So, it’s important to distinguish clearly between traditions and religion. The issue of the calendar is a case in point in this respect. Does it belong to the tradition category ? Or to that of religious prescriptions? That’s the question.

I am not qualified to answer this question. But I think such people as Yusuf al-Qaradawi know what they are talking about. So do the ulemas from all over the world who are members of the European Council for Fatwa and Research. So, when they say that there’s no incompatibility between astronomical calculations and religious prescriptions concerning the determination of the beginning of Ramadan, I do trust their judgment.

There already was a well-known Egyptian jurist who said in the 1930s the same thing. So, do we need to discuss forever an issue which was settled either 14 centuries ago, or one century ago, depending on which people’s judgment one wants to trust?