Islamic Calendar Development In North America

By S. Khalid Shaukat

In modern age of communication and technology, we all need to plan, schedule, and announce various religious occasions sometimes years in advance. We need an Islamic calendar so that we can give the Islamic dates to the planners of future activities. This article is an attempt to fulfill such need. We all know that Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar based on the sighting of the crescent. For Islamic calendar, the basic guidance regarding the reckoning of time comes from the Qur’an, and Hadith.

(Qur’an, 2:189): “They ask you about new crescent moons, say they are to mark fixed times for mankind and Hajj.”

(Qur’an, 55:5): “The sun and the moon follow courses exactly computed.”

(Qur’an, 10:5): “It is He who made sun a lamp, and moon a light and measured stages so you know number of years and count (of time) .”

(Qur’an, 9:36): “Number of months in sight of Allah is twelve. So ordained by Him, the day He created the heavens and the earth.”

Thus, in the Islamic calendar, the visible waxing crescent moon marks the beginning of each month, and there are 12 months in a year. According to Abu Hurayra, the Messenger said: "Fast to its sighting (ru'yah) and break your fast to its sighting, and if it is obscured to you by clouds, then count the month to thirty days." (Hadith, Bokhari and Muslim). The word ru'yah has been used in the language of the Qur’an for "vision" by knowledge. This is evident (Qur’an, 105:1), "See thou not how thy Lord had dealt with the people of the elephant?" and (Qur’an, 99:6) "See thou not how thy Lord dealt with the 'Ad people?". Here, Allah is questioning the Messenger, "Do you not know?", "Are you not aware of?", etc., while the Messenger was not even born at the time of the people of the elephant or the people of 'Ad. Therefore, the Hadith encompasses the meaning "Fast to the vision by eye or by knowledge of the new crescent."

It is interesting to note that the same concept of knowledge, (earth’s motion around it’s axis) that brings day and night, is being used by Muslims to begin their fast by calculations, and break their fast by calculations in every day of Ramadan. But for the beginning and ending of Ramadan, there is so much division about what criteria should be used. Moreover, the same concept (of knowledge) is precisely what Muslims have used for centuries to determine the daily prayer times by calculations, despite the fact that in the past Muslims used direct vision of the sun (the simplest and only method available at the time) to ascertain the prayer times. However, with the advent of the clock and wristwatch, a Muslim no longer goes out to check whether an object's shadow has reached its length or whether the sun has gone below horizon. Instead, he simply looks at his watch and uses prayer times (calculated years in advance). The same principle for Islamic Calendar may be applied using the precise orbit, rotation of the moon and earth, and the certainty of crescent moon sighting since both the earth and the moon move with sufficiently known precision, and we have enough confidence in the certainty of moon sighting in various locations on specific dates.

Furthermore, the Messenger warned his companions that they were unlettered people who could "neither write nor count" (Hadith, Muslim) and that they must therefore prefer to sight the moon rather than calculate its position ‑ although if the day were cloudy, they could calculate it by counting 30 days from the previous crescent. “Neither write nor count” was not an order by the Messenger that we should never write or calculate. It was merely a statement of the situation of the Ummah at that time. If it was meant to be a prohibition for calculations, then we should take an equal prohibition for writing. Why do we read and write. Later, when Islamic civilization flourished, Muslims could do more than count, read, and write. They invented spherical trigonometry and positional astronomy. With the advances in astronomy and computer technology Muslims are now able to calculate the dates when a new crescent could be sighted, and when it is impossible to be seen; of course, there may be a gray area of uncertainty that we will deal later in this article. When sighting was more reliable than calculation, the Ummah was told to rely on sighting. Today calculation is more reliable than sighting (with the exception of the gray area), hence, we should make use of calculations to know ahead of time when we should look for the moon and when we can reject the sighting claims.

Muslim astronomers have worked on this subject more diligently in the last three decades. Abdali (1979) presented his views on crescent’s visibility. Ilyas (1989) presented his work on lunar visibility and the Islamic calendar. Afzal has been collecting information on moon sighting from all over the world through the Committee for Crescent Observation. With the benefit of the work done by these and other notable scientists, the author carried this research further by compiling published crescent observation data from 1859 to 1990 CE, and data collected by the Committee for Crescent Observation from 1979 to the present. A database for crescent observation containing over 1000 cases of sighting or non-sighting was analyzed with the algorithm (Shaukat’s criterion) developed by the author to calculate visibility. The continuous efforts by the author in the last two decades for refining the visibility criterion shows that sufficient agreement exists between actual sighting and calculations for certainty of sighting. Thus, using this concept, Islamic calendar for North America can be developed. In such calculations, there is a small percentage of uncertainty (about two months in a year on an average) when the visibility curve falls just west of California, in which case, a note can be added in the calendar indicating that although it is improbable to see the moon on that evening, there is a small chance that the moon could be sighted in North America on that day. Only for such a case will we have to wait for sighting confirmation; but for all other months the calculations of sighting are quite definite without ambiguity, and we do not have to wait for sighting (although the sighting would eventually be confirmed) to find out when the month begins.

Conclusion

In modern age of communication, we all need to plan, schedule, and announce various religious occasions. We need to plan meetings, conventions, and other social events sometimes years in advance. We need an Islamic calendar so that we can give the Islamic dates to the planners of future activities. The Islamic calendar based on calculations of sighting that has proven to be sufficiently accurate for practical purposes would compel us to start the Islamic months correctly without chaos and confusion. Calculations for a visible crescent meet the intent of Shari'ah, and are effective means for producing an Islamic calendar. Benefits of developing such a calendar greatly surpass the chaotic consequences created by mistaken and erroneous claims of sighting, and having to wait past midnight to get the confirmed news of sighting, or a decision from Islamic Shura Council of North America.