Saudi Gazette translates a piece from it’s Arabic sister-paper Okaz arguing that it’s time for Saudi Arabia to abandon the hijri calendar for all but religious purposes. By insisting on using a calendar that doesn’t mesh at all well with the surrounding world, Saudi Arabia puts itself and its citizens at a disadvantage. The hijri calendar is, of course, a social construct whose use is not a religious requirement. That calendar did not exist at the time of Islam’s formation other than as a social construct of pre-Islamic society. Continuing to use it for official and business purposes leads to confusion when Saudis interact with the rest of the world. It also leads to problems for individual Saudis who find that different documents have dates translated in different ways, making them a year older or a year younger than they actually are. For some reason, immigration and security officials around the world like individuals to have just one birth date.
VIEW FROM THE ARABIC PRESS
Hani NaqshabandiMANY years ago my grandmother had an old clock that followed an unusual time schedule, or at least that’s what I thought when I was a small child in her care. The sundown call to prayer was, at 12 o’clock, Isha (night prayers) at half past one, and dawn at 10 o’clock. Outside the house it left me baffled, as everything else followed a completely different time to that of my grandmother.
When I asked her about this she said that her clock followed “Arab time” – known in those days as “Zawali” – a different schedule to the one everyone knows today, and it seemed that a lot of the women of my grandmother’s age in the area followed this same time system that had been passed down through the years.
And so it remained until our contact with the outside world grew, and the house I lived in grew and opened up to a world running on the other time system we all know today.
If my grandmother was alive today, she would have to reset her clock, or become locked in her own special time zone.
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March:22:2010 - 17:40
I would say that operating simultaneously two calendaric systems is not difficult.
March:22:2010 - 19:52
Well, there’s a technical disadvantage when one must keep track of two calendars while the competition only needs one. Too, as the article noted, it essentially doubles the opportunities for errors. Some of the errors can have serious consequences.
March:22:2010 - 21:11
John, I once wrote a paper about problems associated with the Hijra Calendar – so I dug it out. Here are parts of it.
1. The Islamic calendar is horribly inaccurate. It has “about” 354 days, with alternating months of 30 days and 29 days, kind of, depending on the month. Even the pre-Islamic lunisolar calendar used in Arabia before Mohammad was much more accurate, being only about 45 minutes off each year. 11 days vs 45 minutes.
2. To make matters worse, Allah himself prohibited intercalary days, weeks or months (Sura 9, 36) that all other systems use to adjust length of the solar orbit to the lunar twenty-four hour rotation of the planet, dooming the Islamic calendar not just to eternal inaccuracy, but accumulative imperfection.
3. To make things even worse worse, Mohammad himself ruled that the new month begins with the observation of the new moon. This depends on the human eyeball, model mark 1, and the weather. That would be Saint Peter, because in South America everybody knows that St. Peters controls climate, except Al Gore.
4. The Hijra calendar is worthless for a practical agricultural society. No farmer in his right mind would use it to plant anything. It only worked as well as it did because Muslimm society was commerce and raid-based, in a very temperate climate.
5. Aside from the small matter of being astronomically wrong by 11 days per year, there is the fact that often Muslims can’t determine exactly when any month actually starts. The reason for this is that the lunar crescent becomes really visible only some 18 hours after the conjunction, and is subject many factors such as weather, time, geographic location, as well as other astronomical parameters.
6. This is why when you visit Muslim websites, there are so often menu items for calendar notices and moon sightings. Watching the moon is very big in Islam (I wont even go into the “Allah is just a recycled version of the old Arabic Moon god” theory found on the Internet!).
7. In simple terms, the Islamic calendar has no real notion of year, as based upon the rotation of the earth around the sun. The Muslim calendar is based upon monthly circles, only. An Islamic “year” is just the sum of 12 Islamic lunar “months”, and has nothing to do with the concept of “year” in scientific or astronomical terms.
8. Because of this, Muslims never really know beforehand when a month is to begin or end, or even when major Islamic events are to take place (first day of Ramadan, eid al-fitr, or eid al-adha, new Islamic year, etc…). They can’t even schedule vacations or make hotel reservations with precise dates, or avoid travel on holy dates. Here is an example of this dilemma: in 2006, the first day of Ramadan (1427 AH) corresponded to Saturday, September 23, 2006 in 20 countries; to Sunday, September 24 in 46 countries; or began on Monday, September 25 in 5 countries. This means that if a person was born on the first or last day of a month, the date may vary according to local time.
9. The situation was so bad that the Saudis quietly decided to throw out Allah’s words and abandoned the new moon sighting method in 1999. Now they use astronomical calculations — so old Almed, the goat-keeper and semi-official moon watcher, does not have to spend the night out on the mountain looking for the new moon. Many Islamic organizations from around the world (including in the USA) have also “re-interpreted” their scriptures so that they, too, don’t have to spend nights on the roof waiting for a break in the clouds so they can see the darn moon.
10. Some old-fashioned, fundamentalists will not accept these innovations (they don’t even like that word). The problem is that because of the uncertainty about when a month starts they might be at home watching TV when they are really supposed to be out doing jihad (as the Quran says: “After the sacred months has passed, go out and scare the darn infidels,” or something like that). This can get on their nerves and even cause a breakdown.
11. It gets worse, because they don’t know when a month starts, they can’t plan properly or print monthly calendars for the year!
12. Now the worst of it all, the one thing that really makes my blood boil. Because Muslims can’t have monthly calendars, they don’t have those cheap glossy girl-of-the-month burqa-babe calendars to put on their walls. How can a society be truly modern with out hot pin-up babes on calendars?
Item 12 wasn’t in the original essay. I just added it now.
March:22:2010 - 21:42
India follows the International calendar for official purposes, but every region of India has its own ritual calendar which decided the local festivals. Some regions have their own solar calendar as well as the lunar calendar. The Hindu system has a tradition of adding an extra month every third year to make the lunar year approximately equal to the solar year. These various local calendars are tuned to the local agricultural cycle – agriculture being the most dominant economy of traditional India and even today to a large extent. Then there are some historical solar calendars – one started in 57 BCE and the other started in 78 CE, which some people use for some traditional occasions. And of course there is the Islamic calendar the Muslims use. Like all other things diverse, we manage with the diversity of calendars quite well!
Jay,
For once I agree with you, except your item # 12 and that nowadays they usually know when a month starts, because of the modern communication networks. But please remember that a tribal society in a desert environment didn’t have much to do with agricultural cycles.
Innovation is good for the progress of a society. Any system that believes innovation is bad or sinful, needs some large-scale updates.
March:22:2010 - 21:45
With the exception of Item 12, I agree, but I’m not sure about your #9. Saudi Arabia publicly claims to stick to the Eyeball Mk-1 method. Whether they ‘re doing something different behind closed doors is another matter, but I’ve never seen it suggested. Every year, come Ramadan, the Saudi papers are replete with articles decrying the old method and calling for the use of astronomical tables. The Saudis don’t suffer as much as some others over the indeterminate date of Ramadan, but certainly have to accommodate differences when it comes to Haj.
First, they need to get away from the eyeball, then they can work on the calendar.
As it is, I really don’t see it much of an issue for anyone but Muslims that religious events are on a weird calendar. It’s another matter, though, when international businesses are involved, particularly when those businesses have no need or concept of an Islamic calendar. In other words, I essentially agree with the Saudi author of this piece. Muslims can continue to wage the battles about the start of months and resolve that for themselves. Eventually.
March:22:2010 - 21:58
Daisy: As you pointed out, the Indian state uses the same calendar as most of the rest of the world. Saudi Arabia does not, or at least not entirely. For some purposes–mostly business and international government issues–the common, Gregorian calendar is in use. For everything else, including the dating of internal documents like birth and death certificates, marriage and divorce documents, governmental bill-paying, etc., then it uses the hijri calendar.
This does present real problems when, say, an Islamic date falls at the border between two Gregorian years. It’s one of the reasons that Saudis have had extra trouble with anti-terrorism programs that rely on positive identification. One document may give the birth year (Gregorian) as 1980; another might state 1981; both rely on the same, possibly even accurate, hijri date.
March:22:2010 - 22:09
John,
You are right about that problem. I think they should follow the Indian system of using the International calendar for official purposes and the Islamic calendar for traditional, non-official purposes. They don’t have many festivals like India does, so it would be even easier for them to do this. This will keep everyone happy.
March:22:2010 - 23:55
Daisy, you have agreed with me at least two other times. I am beginning to worry about you!
I can’t understand the resistance to #12. Most people don’t understand art, that is the problem.
March:23:2010 - 02:14
Jay,
If you know what I do, you would not include me in the category of people who don’t understand art!
I have nothing against having women’s pictures on the wall; I just don’t see this as a necessary outcome of modernity. Modernity is a multi-dimensional concept and having women’s images on the wall doesn’t have much to with it.
March:23:2010 - 02:29
To make things even more hectic, there are actually two Hijri calendars in use. There’s the official Um Al Qura calendar, which was calculated many many years ago by Ottoman astronomers. Since this is a pre-calculated calendar (up to the year 2029AD I believe) it is used to conduct official government business and is the one used in pretty much all calendars you can buy from stationary stores. Microsoft even has built in support for it in its software. This calendar, however, is not very accurate in regards to moon sightings. For religious purposes people turn to the Eye Ball Mk1 (so far) type calendar. This can get very frustrating. You can be fasting on the 1st of Ramadan, buy a newspaper, and see that the official date used is 30th of Sha’ban.
March:23:2010 - 03:56
I have never paid attention to the Hijri Dates. I find most people I encounter are frustrated with it.
What ever happened to Saudis chaning the weekend days?
March:24:2010 - 03:38
J. Kactuz, Most of the traditional/farmer/bedu people I met seem to be very knowledgeble about cycles relating the climate to astronomy signs and don’t depend on Hijra dates. I am sorry if I cannot explain, because in all sincerity.. it has me baffled.
March:24:2010 - 04:19
More important to me that the use of the Hijri calender are the weekend dates. Look at the names of the Arabic days.
Sunday= Ahad which means FIRST.
Monday=SECOND,
Tuesday=THIRD,
Wednesday=FOURTH,
Thurs=FIVE,
Friday=Congregational prayer,
Saturday=Sabbath=Rest.
Which days do YOU think should be the weekend? Inexplicably they start the week with Sat., the Sabath. The second day is Day One….etc.
The weekend should be Fri/Sat. Congregational Prayer/Day of Rest. Week should start with the FIRST DAY. But the wingnuts here rant about “western” influence!!!!
Ok. off topic sorry.
When I lived in the States, ISNA used a combination eye/scientific method I thought made sense. Science, in a matter of speaking was a “witness”. So if a moon sighting was scientifically impossible, the “sighting” didn’t count. That said, people had to go out and look. If there was cloud cover, you might start the month scientifically late because of no sighting. But the most the calender could be off was one day-because of the automatic limit to the length of the month.
Not like some of the bizarro other stuff I’ve witnessed over the years where the dates are 2-3 days off because someone saw a “miraculous” moon etc. and then the community would call for an extra day of fasting later in the year to make up for their mess…nonsense.
March:24:2010 - 04:28
@DW
Farmers (and many old-timers) in Saudi Arabia use a deprecated and lesser known form of the Hijri calendar which uses Zodiac signs as months, and the Hijri count for the year. This, of course, corresponds with solar cycles and can be used tell seasons apart, much like you could with the Gregorian calendar. You can still buy calendars in the market that have Gregorian, Hijri and Zodiac dates at the same time. There’s even a Saudi proverb using them that goes “Burj al assad, yilsag al thobe fil jasad”/”At the sign of Leo, your thobe will stick to your body” to denote how it hot it gets in July/August.
March:24:2010 - 08:31
DW and M–thanks for that further information, which is very interesting and makes good agricultural sense it seems. Besides, Leo is the best…
Sandy–I’m not sure I fully understood your comment, though I appreciated the reminder about the names of the days of the week in Arabic. It seems to me similar to Gregorian inspired calendars, some of which start the week at Sunday and some at Monday. My guess is Seventh Day Adventist and Mormon calendars start at Saturday or Sunday. I’m favouring the Aztec calendar only because I want there to be more sunshine, for which I am willing to put a sundial in the window!
And now I am thinking about “days of the week underpants” and wondering about the sabbath, much like Sally in “When Harry Met Sally” and the missing pair, so I will stop here… LOL