When is Eid?
Sigh.Here we are again. Multiple Eids. I shouldn't have to be asking this question. Again. And finding the multiplicities of confusion. Again.
Here are the options for choosing Eid day. All other options seem just as arbitrary, so I'm offering my own suggestion. Here are the options:
a. Friday (according to the Saudis)
b. Saturday (according to the UK moonsighting committee, Ruiyat Hilal)
c. Sunday (according to those who started on Friday, and following on from the UK moonsighting committee).
Send in your answers. One will be picked at random and declared as the correct Eid.
P.S. For those who fail to see the terrible black humour in the ongoing Eid schism, this is not a serious way of establishing Eid.
P.P.S. check this chart out from crescentmoonwatch, showing that the moon cannot be sighted till Friday night unless you live in the depths of South America or the Pacific ocean. OK, OK, the chart is not so hard to read - the shaded bits are where the new moon could be sighted on Thursday night which would mean that Eid is on Friday. The white bits are where there is no new moon i.e. Eid will be on Saturday.
Here are the options for choosing Eid day. All other options seem just as arbitrary, so I'm offering my own suggestion. Here are the options:
a. Friday (according to the Saudis)
b. Saturday (according to the UK moonsighting committee, Ruiyat Hilal)
c. Sunday (according to those who started on Friday, and following on from the UK moonsighting committee).
Send in your answers. One will be picked at random and declared as the correct Eid.
P.S. For those who fail to see the terrible black humour in the ongoing Eid schism, this is not a serious way of establishing Eid.
P.P.S. check this chart out from crescentmoonwatch, showing that the moon cannot be sighted till Friday night unless you live in the depths of South America or the Pacific ocean. OK, OK, the chart is not so hard to read - the shaded bits are where the new moon could be sighted on Thursday night which would mean that Eid is on Friday. The white bits are where there is no new moon i.e. Eid will be on Saturday.
P.P.P.S. For those of you who are reading this and are not Muslim, consider this one of those strange intra-faith anomalies. Read, raise your eyebrows in a perplexed manner, and move on... :-)
posted by Shelina Zahra Janmohamed at 20:55
9 Comments:
well i think it just goes to show that there is no such thing as a 'muslim' community - there are different groups who want to celebrate it on different days, which is fine really, as long as we aren't all fooling ourselves we are actually celebrating 'together' because we aren't really.
asalam alaikum
me and my family are doing eid today, as thats what has been posted on most of the sites and also the radio channels and the islam channel have had eid greetings from regents park mosque.
we began fasting on the thursday and so we are having eid today.
I shall duly enter you in the prize draw (for which I'm afraid there is no prize!)
However! Whilst all these sources are telling you it is Eid, have you actually checked the provenance of the information? I could tell you it's Christmas, but would you believe me? It is a physical impossibility for the moon to have been sighted yesterday...
Move along, move along, there's nothing to see here!
Are you trying jedi mind tricks with us Shelina?
its the saudi followers. blame them.
if im not wrong, saudi launched an investigattion last yr- post eid(sorry, cant recall which one), and concluded that they incorrectly celebrated eid and should have gone with when we celebrated it.
anyway, as long as everyone is happy and dappy about it and questions why theyre doing it when they are are are consequently satisfied with responde, then its fine. not a problem..right? read top line once again.
>>as thats what has been posted on most of the sites and also the radio channels and the islam channel have had eid greetings from regents park mosque.
posted on most sites? unless youre reading a site either funded by the saudis or blatent blind followers, yes, perhaps. islam channel, unfortunately, relies heavily on any announcement from regents park mosque. since when was regents park the collective muslim voice? i guess being funded by the saudis helps.
i dont know about any other channel, but my local radio station are, along with maher khan from sunrise radio, celebrating eid ul fitr on saturday. oh and most of birmingham mosques too. these are only a handful that i personally know of. fact is we have less saudi following in the UK than the impression youre giving.
/******/no, i dont hate saudis/*****/
Hmm, I'm not sure not celebrating it on the same day is as schism-y as it seems, though I can see how one could feel more "ummah-fied" if it was on the same day. Back in the olden days when messages were sent on horse and camel-back, there is no way a fullmoon-sighting in Medina could be relayed to places like Syria in time for them to do it on the same day, so they'd have to rely on seeing the fullmoon for themselves.Seeing as it takes about 24 hours for the whole world to see a full moon, it's perfectly likely that some regions celebrated Eid a day later than the region that saw the fullmoon first.
We don't all pray Fajr at the same time and similarly it's better not to be too bothered by different days of Eid. We still remain an Ummah and the more tolerant of the different ways of doing things, the happier it will be.
Happy Eid!
silly muslims and their moonsighting problems.
sh. hamza has an excellent article on the issue here: http://iieonline.org/chicagohilal/links/links/zaytuna_moonsighting1.pdf
and here:
http://iieonline.org/chicagohilal/links/links/zaytuna_moonsighting2.pdf
ma'assalaam
for readers trying to access the links above, i'm not having any joy getting through to them...
Post a Comment
<< Home