۞ يَسْـَٔلُونَكَ عَنِ ٱلْأَهِلَّةِ ۖ قُلْ هِىَ مَوَٰقِيتُ لِلنَّاسِ وَٱلْحَجِّ ۗ وَلَيْسَ ٱلْبِرُّ بِأَن تَأْتُوا۟ ٱلْبُيُوتَ مِن ظُهُورِهَا وَلَـٰكِنَّ ٱلْبِرَّ مَنِ ٱتَّقَىٰ ۗ وَأْتُوا۟ ٱلْبُيُوتَ مِنْ أَبْوَٰبِهَا ۚ وَٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ
“They ask you ˹O Prophet˺ about the phases of the moon. Say, ‘They are a means for people to determine time and pilgrimage.’ Righteousness is not in entering your houses from the back doors. Rather, righteousness is to be mindful ˹of Allah˺. So enter your homes through their ˹proper˺ doors, and be mindful of Allah so you may be successful.” Quran [2:189]
عن ابن أبي أوفى قال : قال رسول الله ﷺ: “إن خيار عباد الله الذين يراعون الشمس والقمر والنجوم والأظلة لذكر الله”
“The best of God’s servants are those who watch the sun, moon, stars, and shadows in order to remember God.” Mustadrak al-Ḥākim [The Book of Belief]
I recently read a post by Shaykh Yasir Qadhi in which he appeals to imams and leaders of Muslim communities to adopt astronomical calculation as a standardized method to establish the times of major events in the Islamic calendar, including the start and end of Ramadan, as well as Eid al-Adha. The argument he presents is not of the legal variety. In fact, he does concede that calculation may be the less supported opinion and that moon sighting, whether global or local, is a stronger position. What Shaykh Qadhi is arguing however, stems more from a practical point of view in a Western context. He does make a strong point in that regard, especially when he draws on his experience and how the adoption of calculation at his mosque, though initially met with some minor resistance, has ultimately led to a more harmonious community participation and engagement with Ramadan activities and Eid. With all the politics and bickering that I’m sure many reading this are familiar with, which often create tensions even within families, one has to concede that anything within the religion’s limits that brings the community closer together and reduces stress and friction between its members is something to be sought. My fear though, is that what Shaykh Qadhi is proposing attempts to treat the symptom rather than cure the disease. Widely adopting the calculation opinion may resolve the tiresome yearly disputations for this particular issue, but it doesn’t address the core driver behind the perennial impulse to engage in disputes, and contributes to an impression that community unity and harmony can only come about through conformity.
I’d like to offer a couple of points to consider with regards to this appeal. Shaykh Qadhi predicts that eventually, the majority, if not all, mosques will adopt calculations to establish the Islamic lunar calendar. Despite the positive impact he’s highlighting for this move in his community, I believe the long-term consequences for how this impacts the way Muslims at large engage with Islam would contribute in part to a catastrophic outcome, which sadly is already being witnessed.
Our modern age is one of intrusive technocracy and immersion in man-made creations in place of experiencing the natural world as it was created with all the uncertainties our subjective sensory perception of it comes with. We believe our delusion of control over nature and time that our empirical measurements give us, and instead of organizing our activities around religious rites, we subjugate religious rites to the illusory time-sensitive imperatives our daily activities demand of us in our materialist culture. As we’ve become increasingly disconnected from nature, we lost touch with the frequent reminders of its order and the signs its Creator ﷻ has put into it, many of which He mentioned in the Quran for us to reflect on how they direct us back to Him. One wonders how can we reflect on passages in the Quran about nature when our modern society has alienated us from it in favour of gadgets and concrete jungles. We recite Surah an-Najm (The Star), but light pollution has effaced the stars to the degree that few have seen more than a couple of them in the heavens if they happened to look up. We recite Surah al-Qamar (The Moon), but we turned the moon into an abstract calculation we quibble about and can’t tell when we do look at it where in the month we’re falling in.
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf wrote in his monograph “Caesarean Moon Births: Calculations, Moon Sighting, and the Prophetic Way”:
The contemplation of the celestial orbs, and their movements provided early man with the most direct connection to his Lord. In the Qur’anic story of Abraham, it is his observance of heavenly phenomenon that leads him to his certainty of God’s unity and transcendence. Since the time of the Seljuq Turks, the crescent moon has been a sign of Islam. Today, for instance, it serves in place of the cross for the relief work of the Muslim medics of the Red Crescent in Muslim lands.
Of late, certain Muslims, responding to the yearly anarchy in determining the beginning of Ramadan, have called for a move to calculations, and an abandonment of the traditional practice of physical observation to determine the new moon… While I recognize that such an argument would seem reasonable given the relative hardships people in North America face in adjusting fixed secular schedules with fluid sacred ones each year, the presence of a clear and unambiguous text from the sound hadith makes ijtihād untenable. Indeed, it could even be argued that connecting people with the natural phenomenon in ourselves and on the horizon–which is where we must look every month, for the new moon–is a central aim and purpose of the religion itself.
In my estimation, the increasing number of young Muslims finding currency in the rationally bankrupt atheist discourse is only possible at a time in which their relationship with Islam has been eroded to an intellectual abstraction rather than the experiential one it should’ve been. The public disenchantment with religion and growing denialism of the natural order is a direct product of its disconnection from nature. I believe the issue of calculation to determine our Islamic calendar to be an important case study and cautionary tale. The following excerpt from Neil Postman’s “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology” is of particular relevance to this point:
Who would have imagined, for example, whose interests, and what worldview would be ultimately advanced by the invention of the mechanical clock? The clock had its origins in the Benedictine monasteries of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The impetus behind the invention was to provide a more or less precise regularity to the routines of the monasteries, which required, among other things, seven periods of devotion during the course of the day. The bells of the monastery were to be rung to signal the canonical hours; the mechanical clock was the technology that could provide precision to these rituals of devotion. And indeed it did. But what the monks did not foresee was that the clock is a means not merely of keeping track of the hours, but also synchronizing and controlling the actions of men. And thus, by the middle of the fourteenth century, the clock had moved outside the walls of the monastery, and brought a new and precise regularity to the life of the workman and the merchant. “The mechanical clock,” as Lewis Mumford wrote, “made possible the idea of regular production, regular working hours and a standardized product.” In short, without the clock, capitalism would have been quite impossible. The paradox, the surprise, and the wonder are that the clock was invented by men who wanted to devote themselves more rigorously to God; it ended as the technology of greatest use to men who wished to devote themselves to the accumulation of money. In the eternal struggle between God and Mammon, the clock quite unpredictably favored the latter…
Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecological. I mean ‘ecological’ in the same sense as the word is used by environmental scientists. One significant change generated total change. If you remove the caterpillars from a given habitat, you are not left with the same environment minus caterpillars: you have a new environment, and you have reconstituted the conditions of survival; the same is true if you add caterpillars to an environment that has had none. This is how the ecology of media works as well. A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything. In the year 1500, fifty years after the printing press was invented, we did not have audio up plus the printing press. We had a different Europe… New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop.
I have already alluded to the transformation of the mechanical clock in the fourteenth century from an instrument of religious observance to an instrument of commercial enterprise. That transformation is sometimes given a specific date – 1370 – when King Charles V ordered all citizens of Paris to regulate their private, commercial, and industrial life, by the bells of the Royal Palace clock, which struck every sixty minutes. All churches in Paris were similarly required to regulate their clocks, in disregard of the canonical hours. Thus, the church had to give material interests precedence over spiritual needs. Here is a clear example of a tool being employed to loosen the authority of the central institution of mediaeval life.
What Postman raises here cannot be emphasized enough, especially his astute observation about ecological change. Islamic practice cannot be reduced to a legal question and have consideration only given to communal reaction to the exclusion of metaphysical dimensions associated with said practice and the impact changing it could have. Islam is the last countercultural corrective force present in the world today, and Muslims resisting the imposition of secular and empiricist demands onto the lunar calendar are an imposing reminder of Allahu Akbar (God is Greater) on our daily lives that goes beyond its proclamation during the athan (call to prayer) and the confines of the prayer itself. Shaykh Hamza explains in a footnote in his essay why he chose the title on this subject:
The title “Caesarian Moon Births” was chosen for two reasons. Like a caesarean birth, the early announcements of the lunar months that have historically accompanied a calculated a new moon are primarily the result of conforming to the scheduling requirements of modern bureaucratic societies. Also, it was the edict of Caesar that was instrumental in forcing the Jews, to abandon their lunar calendar, based on actual citing and resorting to one based on calculations.
As calculations become more widely adopted, the teaching of the legal rulings on determining the time of Ramadan and the two Eids and observing the moon becomes more of an aesthetic exercise without an imperative for action. We become the ones deciding when we observe these rites instead of waiting to see when the signs appear for us to observe them. There is no doubt Shaykh Qadhi’s appeal to widely adopt calculations to determine the Islamic calendar comes from his deep concern for the unity of community. However, I believe this to be shortsighted. Moreover, it serves an empiricist impulse of the modern philosophically naturalist paradigm in which we are all live, and embeds this impulse further into the religion. The uncertainty that comes from moon sighting is a monthly reminder of our submission and our position as vicegerents awaiting the arrival of God’s command. There’s an element of intellectual humility and spiritual harmony with the rest of creation that this engenders when we assume the position of recipients awaiting a natural birth that we get to experience anew every time it happens and exercise a Sunnah of the Beloved ﷺ as we pray:
“اللهم أهله علينا بالأمن والإيمان والسلامة والإسلام، ربي وربك الله، هلال رشد وخير.”
“Allahumma ahillahu ‘alaina bil-amni wal-īman, was-salamati wal-Islam, Rabbi wa Rabbuk-Allah, Hilalu rushdin wa khairin.”
“O Allah, let this moon appear on us with security and Iman; with safety and Islam. (O moon!) Your Lord and mine is Allah. May this crescent be bringing guidance and good.” at-Tirmidhi
This, and Allah knows best.
