Issues about Ramadan

According to the opinion of Imam Ash-Shaf'I and others every region is to take into consideration its own sighting and not to follow the sighting of others.

If The Moon Is Seen In One City But Not Another "Reliance of the traveller"

i1.9 - If the moon is seen in one city but not another, then if the two are close (O: i.e. in the same region),the ruling (n: that the new month has come) holds for both. But if the two are not close, then not. ( O: i.e. the people far from the place where it was seen are not obliged to fast ); not close meaning in different regions, such as the Hijaz, Iraq, and Egypt.

What is Ikhtilaful-Matali' and what is Ittihadul-Matali'?

The Islamic calendar is a purely lunar calendar. It contains 12 months that are based on the motion of the moon. The calendar is based on the Qur'an (Sura IX, 36-37) and its proper observance is a sacred duty for Muslims.

Each month starts when the lunar crescent is first seen (by a human observer's eye) after a new moon.

Hilal, in Arabic is not the astronomical new moon but the crescent that can be sighted by average naked eye.

Although new moons may be calculated quite precisely, the actual visibility of the crescent is much more difficult to predict. It depends on factors such as weather, the optical properties of the atmosphere, and the location of the observer. It is therefore very difficult to give accurate information in advance about when a new month will start.

Furthermore, some Muslims depend on a local sighting of the moon, whereas others depend on a sighting by authorities somewhere else (especially Saudi Arabia) in the Muslim world.

Both sides claimed valid Islamic practices, and this issue is responsible for different starting & ending days for Ramadan even within a country.

Local sighting for Eid is as natural as local timings for prayer. After all, Gold Coast Muslims do not pray Fajr by prayer timings of the great Masjid Al-Ĥarām. By the time Mecca sees the Hilal, some countries will be having their lunch break!

Whether or not a locally sighted moon is binding for distant lands is an issue that comes up each year. The mu`tamad position with the Shafiis is that it is binding only for lands that share the same horizon. And within each madhab, you can find supporters for both positions.

What is important for everyone to understand from the very beginning is that both sides have their evidence, and both sides can respond to each other's evidence. No one ignored the Qur'an and Sunna, rather each side understood the texts in a slightly different way.

The question of sighting the moon for each lunar month was thoroughly discussed at a conference of Islamic scholars on International Islamic Calendar, held at Pulau Pinang, Malaysia in October 1991. The conference decided that astronomical calculations on the expected visibility of a new moon should be used as an AID to sighting of crescent. The conference also agreed that any report of sighting of the crescent should be rejected if it was not consistent with astronomical calculations.

The word Ru’yah and witnessing are clear in their literal meaning (seeing with naked eyes) thus cannot be taken in their metaphorical meanings (calculation).

Question: Is it not possible have Eid on the same day throughout the whole world after the actual sighting of the crescent?

Answer: It is not possible to have EID on the same day throughout the whole world after the actual sighting of the crescent, because, when the moon is sighted for example in Hawaii around 6:00pm, it will be 2:00pm of the next day in Japan, and 4:00pm of the next day in New Zealand