By
Nadeem F. Paracha
Jul 12 2020
On May 16
this year, the minister of science and technology, Fawad Chaudhry, declared
that this year’s Eid-ul-Fitr would be celebrated on May 24. By doing this, he
was signalling the futility of having a committee of clerics dedicated to the
sighting of the Eid moon, when some basic astronomy and mathematics can
accurately predict its emergence.
Illustration by Abro
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The move
did not go down well with members of the committee, known as the Ruet-i-Hilal
Committee. A heated debate ensued. Sightings of the Eid-ul-Fitr moon in
Pakistan have had a jagged history. Before the creation of Pakistan in 1947, it
was a tradition among the Muslims of South Asia to sight the moon with the
naked eye and report the sightings to ulema or clerics.
Scroll.in
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In fact,
this ritual was quite common among most Muslims in other regions as well. The
tradition was not interfered with by European colonialists who, between the
18th and mid-20th centuries, ruled over vast swathes of Muslims in the Middle
East, Africa and South Asia and oversaw the introduction of modernity in these
regions. Ironically, the need to utilise more ‘scientifically sound’ methods to
sight the moon began to emerge during the decolonisation period.
Clerics of Pakistan's Moon Sighting Committee use a telescope for the
new moon that signals the start of Islamic month Ramadan, in Karachi on May 5.
Image Credit: AP
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But it was
a gradual transformation. It was part and parcel of policies in various Muslim
countries where the state was experimenting with ideas derived from fusing
together modernity, nationalism and faith. Turkey and various Arab countries in
the Middle East began to introduce telescopes, and ultimately astronomical calculations
to predict the arrival of Ramazan and the two Eids. Committees were formed in
which scientists sat with clerics. Over the next few decades, Turkey and most
Arab countries had come to almost entirely rely upon astronomical data to
determine various important lunar Muslim months and dates.
It is still
rare for the Muslim world to celebrate Eid on the same day, though. Apart from
the natural dynamics of moon cycles and different weather conditions that may
make the moon visible in one area and not in the other, politics too plays a
role in, let’s say, the disunity of Eid. For example, a bulk of Muslim
countries follow the astronomical lunar calendar prepared by Saudi scientists,
while many others follow the one prepared by Turkish astronomers. Then there
are countries such as Pakistan, Malaysia, Egypt, Iran, Indonesia and Tunisia
that have formed their own committees for this purpose.
The issue
has as much to do with sectarian and sub-sectarian divides as it has with
geopolitical rivalries between major Muslim countries. But whereas most Muslim
countries now apply latest scientific methods to determine the start of the
Islamic lunar months, some countries such as Pakistan seem to have gotten
stuck. According to Dr Fazal Ahmed’s 1973 book, The Science of Sighting of
Moon, the first government of Pakistan formed a committee of religious scholars
who were to coordinate with members of the meteorological department to
authenticate moon sightings.
A decade
later in 1958, the committee’s announced date for Eid-ul-Fitr was challenged by
a group of clerics in Peshawar, where Eid was celebrated a day before the rest
of the country. In 1959, Field Marshal (self-appointed) Ayub Khan, who had come
to power in 1958, lamented that the clerics were using Islam as a means to
hinder progress. S.A. Ansari, in his essay for the 2011 issue of the Journal of
Political Studies, quoted Ayub as saying that the clerics were doing “a great
disservice to Islam.”
In his
book, Dr Fazal doesn’t say exactly what modern methods were introduced by the
committee to sight the moon. But in March 1961, after being convinced by a body
of scientists about the accurate date of that year’s Eid-ul-Fitr, the Ayub
regime bypassed the committee and directly announced the date. The popular
Islamic scholar from Karachi, Ehteshamul Haq Thanvi, was the head of the
committee at the time. Peshawar had already celebrated Eid a day before, after
clerics in the city insisted that Pakistan follow Saudi Arabia’s lead. The
majority of people in Karachi, on the other hand, followed Thanvi’s lead and
observed Eid one day after the date given by the government. So, in 1961,
Eid-ul-Fitr was celebrated on three different days in the country.
Almost the
same happened in 1967. Dr Fazal writes that the 1967 episode was politicised by
the religious parties after the regime discarded the date announced by the
committee and changed it. The regime claimed the committee’s date was
scientifically inaccurate. Ayub’s opponents decried that this was part of the
regime’s “oppressive policies against the ulema”, while some Urdu dailies
suggested it all boiled down to superstition “because the regime believed
celebrating Eid on a Friday was a bad omen.” This was sensationalist gibberish,
of course.
In 1974,
when the issue of multiple Eids failed to get resolved, the government of Z.A.
Bhutto gave the committee legislative cover. Thanvi was reinstated as the
committee’s head and eight more members, including a woman, were inducted. The
legislation did not require any compulsory coordination between the committee
and the meteorological department. However, committee members were given better
telescopes.
The October
1973 issue of the Pakistan Economist ran a feature on the debate a year before
the legislation. The feature quoted various ulema who suggested that Pakistan
should take Saudi Arabia’s lead. However, ulema belonging to the Sunni Barelvi
sub-sect insisted that the country must follow the sightings of its own ulema.
This idea was supported by scientists such as Dr Fazal who claimed that the
nature of lunar cycles is such that every country must take their own path.
The
legislation seemed to have somewhat resolved the issue, even though the
committee never carried with it anything more than a telescope. No scientists
were ever involved in the procedure. The call to employ more scientific methods
returned decades later, when clerics associated with the then NWFP (present-day
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) branch of the committee began to follow Saudi Arabia’s
lead. The dichotomy in Eid moon sightings between clerics in that province and
the rest of the country intensified from the 1990s until one of the main
figures in the controversy, the Peshawar-based Shahabuddin Popalzai, was
arrested in 2017 and forced to fly out to Dubai.
Perhaps
noticing that a majority of Pakistanis were never comfortable with the
dichotomy, Fawad Chaudhry decided to adopt astronomical methods used in most
Muslim countries to determine moon sightings. Committee members were livid.
In a
country where, ever since the mid-1970s, the state and governments have
continued to appease the point of views of clerics to evade religious
controversies, Chaudhry threw down the gauntlet. And won. The irony is that he
is a minister in a government that is mostly headed by urban conservatives.
However, it was not his government he was banking on, but rather a powerful
state institution. Some dailies reported that members of the committee, who
were challenging him, suddenly withdrew their opposition after receiving a call
from persons associated with that state institution. The institution has
increasingly seen the dichotomy as an expression of national disunity. Chaudhry
seemed to have based his move exactly on this observation.
Original
Headline: REACHING FOR THE MOON
Source: The Dawn, Pakistan
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-society/some-basic-astronomy-mathematics-accurately/d/122353
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