Daily Times

Even if hindsight showed that the Ruet e Hilal Committee’s decision to announce Eid for Thursday might have been technically right – though the debate about the issue still refuses to die down – the manner in which it carried out its proceedings and the time it took to announce its decision made a mockery of what is supposed to be an exercise carried out just out of respect for the sanctity of the occasion. The Committee was formed all those decades ago precisely to streamline the process of collecting information about moon sighting from across the country, which was quit a task before the media revolution, so the last thing it should do is create hurdles in its own work and put a question mark on its own existence at a time when an increasing number of people are questioning the rationale to stick with this procedure.

Almost all Muslim countries, including the Kingdom of Saudi Ariabia (KSA), announce important dates like the two Eids and beginning and end dates of crucial months well in advance yet keep up old traditions moon-sighting and public announcement to uphold traditions that are considered very noble. But nowhere are such committees allowed to interfere with or dictate to the official calendar as in our case, which paralyses the whole process more than anything else and literally amounts to putting the cart before the horse.

There are more questions that need to be answered. Since the Ruet e Hilal Committee was mandated with the decision, why did it take till half-past-eleven in the night to reach a conclusion? And what about leaked videos showing disarray in the proceedings and the eventual announcement that the decision was “unanimous”? Now who’s responsible for all the controversy and feverish speculation that has been triggered? People, even in these dark times when the pandemic is changing much about the way we live and work, are now more obsessed than anything else with whether the prospect of two sermons in case Eid fell on Friday, which the superstitious take as an ominous sign for incumbent governments, was behind that evening’s travesty.

All this puts the government in yet another sticky position when it could least afford it. It’s true that the clergy is an integral part of our society and must be taken along in all matters, but it must also realise, and be made to realise, that the putting roadblocks on the road to progress, be it by outlawing loudspeakers, issuing fatwas against the internet or now by refusing to accept the legitimacy of technology in calculating lunar and solar cycles, is not going to get anything done and that is precisely why it is unacceptable. *