OK, I’ve had plenty of banging my head on the wall time this week merely attempting to explain to people in Birmingham and the wider UK as to why Eid-al-Adha should be on Sunday 5th October 2014 and not Saturday 4th October 2014.
Let’s get one thing right from the beginning. The Saudis (inc Haji’s) are RIGHT to do Eid on Saturday 5th October 2014 (10th Dhul-Hijjah 1435) as the new crescent moon signifying the beginning of the month of Dhul-Hijjah WAS observable IN Saudi Arabia on the evening of Thursday September 25th 2014.
The chart below shows new moon visiblity for the Thursday September 25th, and the RED shading means the new moon would have been ‘EASILY VISIBLE to the NAKED EYE’ whereas the PEACH shading means observable only under PERFECT CONDITIONS. I’ve put a square around Saudi Arabia – clearly the new cresent moon WAS visible IN Saudi Arabia on Thursday September 25th. Count 10 days from 25th (include the 25th!) and you come to Saturday 4th October 2014.
Now look at the circle around the UK. No RED or PEACH shading, no shading of any kind means the new moon was NOT visible anywhere from the mainland UK on Thursday 25th September 2014.
Now let’s look at the chart for Friday 26th September 2014 below, and you will see RED everywhere including the UK. So if you base your judgement on local sighting (which to be honest and in my opinion you should do) then count 10 days from 26th September means the 10th of Dhul-Hijjah in the UK is Sunday 5th October 2014. Therefore Eid-al-Adha for the entirety of the UK was on SUNDAY (again my opinion, you can do whatever you want).
Please remember we are on a LUNAR cycle here, the Earth is round. Visibility for different days for different global regions is the norm.
If you imagine for just 1 minute that ALL and ANY global communications were disrupted, how would you decide the end of of Dhul-Qadah and beginning of Dhul-Hijjah? Yes, you would go outside and look for the new moon. If you don’t see it at all you would complete 30 days of Dhul-Qaddah and move on to the 1st of Dhul-Hijjah
Being out of sync is nothing new, during the early Islamic years a community just 100 miles from Makkah for example would end up doing Eid on different days. Why? Either because the person sighting the moon at either location missed it or mistook a different observation (e.g, a solar planet) for the new moon and announced the date for Eid accordingly. Due to it being impossible to send a message to & fro within a few days they were not able to corroborate their findings. Even with the 10 days of Dhul-Hijjah ‘gap’ it wasn’t always possible to get communications across the region in that time frame. Practically zero chance during the end of Ramadan(!)
To conclude, what does the Day of Eid-al-Adha have to do with the Day of Arafat? Nothing at all. A little bit of Islamic history, Eid-al-Adha existed well before (7 years before) Hajj became a pillar of Islam and before there was even a ‘Day of Arafat’. Oh for those of you who advocate Global Sighting – well, all I can say is that this is a recent innovation and was never the tradition (you won’t find it in any school of Fiqh). Ever. This by extension also applies to those who rely upon Saudi sightings of the new moon – for residents of the UK following them is Global Sighting. Geddit?
Read more HERE and thanks & copyright to Moon Watch Project (http://astro.ukho.gov.uk/moonwatch/index.html) for the diagrams above.
Why is an Islamic month not a specific set of days like in the western Gregorian calendar?
Islamic months may be 29 or 30 days in length, in some regular or irregular sequence. The simple answer is it’s because the Moon takes 29.5 days to orbit the Earth once! Actually it is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3 seconds to be exact!
How many ‘Months’ in an Islamic year?
12 months, same as the Gregorian. Most Muslims will be familiar with their names.
How many Days in an Islamic Year?
This is where it gets interesting, their are either 354 or 355 days in an Islamic Year (that 0.5 day can make a big difference!). So either 10 or 11 days shorter than the Gregorian 365 days (366 every leap year – now that makes it more interesting).
You have far too much time on your hands and all this anger just because GLM did not give you any halwa when you went there for Iftar!!!
Frustration, not Anger. Grrrrrrrrr