WILL WE EVER all start fasting and have Eid on the same days?
Here in Britain, Ramadhan remains an annual reminder of our disunity as we find different communities starting and finishing on different days. Across the world we find countries that are literally next to each other beginning and ending on different days.
Of course, if we were united as one ummah under one Khalifah, as is required by Allah and His Messenger ﷺ, then it would have been so easy. For we would have had the entire ummah across the world going out on the 29th of Shaban looking to see the moon. And if anyone saw it, he could report it straight away to the judges of his area testifying to what he saw. Once verified, that report then would be relayed instantly to the Khilafah’s moon sighting office and the state media could relay it to the ummah across the world. We would start Ramadhan together on the same day. And we would have Eid on the same day.
But that isn’t our reality today. We live in an unusual situation where we are split into over 50 states created by colonial powers, who aim to keep us weak and divided for ever more.
In recent years we have seen a push here in Britain to follow our own local moon sighting as a solution to this disunity.
That a particular area should follow its own moon sighting is an opinion held by some scholars (such as those of the Shafi’i school). This opinion is not new amongst the Muslims, and they base it on the understanding of an incident reported in Sahih Muslim when a sahabah travelling from ash-Sham where Ramadhan started on a Friday came to Madinah to find that they had started Ramadhan on a Saturday and they did not accept the earlier start.
Whilst that position is known, I find that it raises more questions than it solves. For instance, how do you define local? Is it your village or town or the distance travelled to become a traveller, or 100 miles or a province or a shared horizon? There are differences of opinion even on these differences of opinions.
Local moon sighting would certainly make sense in the olden days when communication was limited by horse and camel and there were impenetrable barriers such as mountains, deserts and seas dividing the peoples. But today when we can live video chat with another Muslim on the other side of the planet, it seems like a backward step to call for local sightings. What happened to strengthening the unity of the Muslims?
What we find is that ‘local’ inevitably becomes the modern nation-state and defining local as such just re-enforces nationalism. Indeed for some to call for ‘local’ sighting isn’t so much about being convinced by the fiqh opinion but only a front to hide their nationalist inclinations and group affiliations. The concept of nationalism however is not supported by our Deen and such divisions of the ummah, our lands and leadership are condemned.
In truth, there is only one moon, but our borders make us look for different moons!
The other opinion amongst the scholars (and held by the Hanafi, Maliki and Hanbali schools) is that any sighting of the new moon anywhere in the world by a Muslim is valid for the Muslims to start or stop fasting. This is because of the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ: ‘Fast on sighting it (the new moon) and break (fast) on sighting it (the new moon), but if the sky is cloudy, then complete the number (of thirty).’ (Muslim)
The wording indicates that the moon must be sighted (and not calculated) and it does not specify that we should fast only when a certain area or certain people see it. It is a simple idea that any Muslim can understand and act upon at any time and is consistent with the Islamic ethos that it came for everyone and not people with PhDs in astronomy.
If Gaza has taught us anything in the last 17 months it is that nationalism has failed us with neighbouring countries abandoning the Palestinians in the name of the nation-state. If we understand just what a disaster that has been for the ummah, is it not time for the Muslims to have a greater vision of unity? Not just in word but in action by refusing to be defined by the borders that the colonialists devised for us.
May Allah ﷻ bring our disunity to an end very soon and establish for us the righteous Khilafah on the method of the Prophet ﷺ once again. Ameen.
Living For Islam 