Daily Times

The Muslims in Pakistan, this year again endured the excruciating wait and anxiety of learning if the night, the prime evening part of which had already elapsed, was going to be their Eid night. Their festive mood and spirit of celebration almost every year is similarly spoiled by the mystery, uncertainty, confusion and contentions about the moon contrived by various clergy cadres keen to maintain their command to validate when the gates of God’s gargantuan generosity are to be opened to the masses. The exact, up-to-the-split-second trajectory, position and elevation of the moon can now be instantly found by routine calculations, consulting observatory records, reading in almanacs or even pinpointed by merely beaming an appropriate signal from any corner of the earth. Even its surface now has been repeatedly explored, visited, drilled, sifted and scanned to determine its core and composition. However, the bliss, bounty and felicitations of the festival it foretells are officially blocked pending the deliberations of the crescent spotting (Ruet-e-Hilal) committee created to retain the traditional clergy’s clout and endorsement. The members of this august committee ironically use their glasses and telescopes, which are obviously old-fashioned technological gadgets, to enhance the power of their human eyes. But they spurn the results gathered from far more powerful and precise radiation techniques, which have extended our vision far beyond the solar system and seabeds. One wonders if they also reject X-ray, ultrasound, CT and MRI scans, which are also obtained through kindred techniques.
The conundrum of this committee was further confounded by another convention of the maulanas at the Qasim Mosque in Peshawar that proclaimed the arrival of Eid even a day earlier. Dissensions there frequently also emerge because Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the tribal belts are inherently inclined to sync their festivals with their Afghan brethren across the border where the lunar visibility field generally precedes Pakistan. So, long before the masses in other parts were planning their fun and festivities, their compatriots in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had mostly wrapped up their event. The gestures, greetings and gossip in places confronted with two different Eids became equally different and embarrassing. Wishes for the best of bliss and bounty for the impending bonanza had to be meticulously mediated. Eids dividing the same street or family spawned even a more bizarre canvas of the convivial merrymakers and austere fasters. Some idealistic enthusiasts enamoured of simultaneous celebrations like Christmas, Easter, Diwali, Halloween and other great global festivals were piqued at this ‘pick your Eid day’ impasse. Some with a relatively more intense faith fervour even fretted over the way Muslims muddled up this momentous occasion. Online chatter portals were no less perturbed.
Confusion and disarray actually arise from the inflexible insistence and pressure of the conservative clergy on a rigid, refractory interpretation of some hadiths of the holy Prophet (PBUH) explaining the practice of beginning and stopping the Ramzan month. A Quranic verse usually cited to emphasise the appearance of the crescent with the naked eye merely states that “new moons are the signs (indicators) to mark the fixed periods (mawaqeets) for mankind and pilgrimage” (2:189). It evidently does not set their actual physical sighting as a precondition to mark any event like Eid as any theoretical reference to their position evidently can also be used to compute periods of time and occasions.
The hadiths relied upon for the actual sighting of the crescent as a pointer to Eid similarly are more related to the earliest phase of Islam. The most emphatic one, for instance, relates how the holy Prophet (PBUH) said, “We are unlettered people.” Meanwhile, he demonstrated by his finger count that Ramzan could comprise 29 or 30 days and advised the 30 days option if the crescent was concealed by clouds to be seen on the 29th. His words about being unlettered, as most scholars and expositors have concurred, evidently referred to some of the swaths then around him because the Muslims later, undeniably, made quite remarkable achievements in astronomical calculations. Jews have used a lunar calendar for about 5,700 years. The Chinese official calendar is still lunar. However, almanacs based on calculated data are published several years in advance, eliminating the need for the last hour moon-sighting saga to pinpoint any particular event.
Computations and comprehension, particularly about the position and movement of the moon, sun and stars, based on unalterable routes, orbits and phases “assigned to them”, actually have also been repeatedly emphasised in the Quran. A resort to calculations, as argued by North American Muslim experts, actually becomes inevitable under the conditions prevailing in parts along the equator, like Trinidad, where a six months’ stretch of rainy season swamps direct sighting operations. It is equally impossible in some polar regions where the moon almost never sets.
Ironically, even the mullahs who insist on actually eyeing the crescent ignore several other similar hadiths that prescribe prayer timings. Fajr, the morning prayer, for example, is to begin with the true dawn, Zuhr is to begin while the shadow of an object becomes about an arm’s length, Asr is to start when the shadows equals the length of the object, Maghrib should begin with the disappearance of the sun and Isha should start with the receding of the red twilight. No one, however, ventures out to measure shadows before praying but just looks at the watch and the prayer time charts, compiled and published several years in advance. The practice at the start of fasting (sehr) is even more mindboggling as there is actually an explicit verse in the holy Quran enunciating that “eat and drink until the white morning thread (light) becomes distinct from the night shade” (2: 187). The Quranic commands are to supersede and take precedence over the hadiths. Yet, despite this patent Quranic injunction, the compliance to come out to see this defining dawn thread has never been noted.
Torn between these two disparate interpretations, we can either remain riveted to times that the Prophet (BPUH) underlined as “an unlettered” era and stay enslaved by the vagaries of weather clouding the moon or move with the modern world by mastering and using emerging knowledge, techniques and practices that are propelling advanced nations into distant space to tackle extraterrestrial civilisations. Given an adequate choice and proper avenues, most people in Pakistan, except a minor retrogressive minority, would never want to be tethered to primitive tools, times and techniques.

The writer is an academic and freelance columnist. He can be contacted at habibpbu@yahoo.com