The coming of the end of Ramadan means the festival of Eid al-Fitr is near – but when exactly will Muslims celebrate this, and how is that determined?
Moon sighting
The Islamic calendar is based on lunar phases, unlike the Gregorian calendar which follows the movement of the earth around the sun. For this reason, the beginning and end of each of the Islamic calendar’s 12 months are determined by the sighting of the moon’s new crescent. It is also due to this that the months of the Islamic calendar shift around the seasons.
To determine whether Ramadan has ended, official moonsighting committees in many Muslim-majority countries will gather to see if the moon can be sighted after sunset on the 29th day of Ramadan.
For those who began fasting on 1 March, the moon sighting will take place on the evening of Saturday 29 March. A positive sighting will indicate that Eid al-Fitr is on Sunday 30 March, while a negative sighting will mean one more day of fasting, and Eid al-Fitr will fall on Monday 31 March.
Tuesday?
Due to some countries beginning Ramadan on 1 March and some on 2 March, it is also possible that Eid al-Fitr will be celebrated by many Muslims on Tuesday 1 April.
Among the Muslim-majority countries that began fasting on 2 March were Malaysia, Pakistan, Iran, and Morocco.
This means that the moonsighting will take place for these countries on the evening of Sunday 30 March, with Eid al-Fitr either taking place on Monday or Tuesday.
In countries where Muslims are in a minority and there are no official moon sighting councils, decisions over whether to rely on local sightings or to follow Saudi Arabia’s sighting have caused ‘split Eids’.
Such is the case in the UK, where the majority of mosques follow Saudi Arabia’s calendar declarations, but a growing number of Muslims have attempted to revive the practice of moon sighting for themselves. Some independent moon sighters have argued that sighting the moon with one’s own community is closer to the practice of the Prophet Muhammad.
One such group is the New Crescent Society, whose members will attempt to sight the new crescent of Shawwal and Eid al-Fitr on Sunday. The group claims that Saudi Arabia’s moon sighting declarations are often unreliable.
“It is scientifically impossible to see the new crescent in Saudi Arabia on Saturday 29 March,” New Crescent Society founder Imad Ahmed told The New Arab.
“Indeed, it will be impossible to see anywhere in the Middle East, or Asia, or Africa, or Europe.”
