I was unaware until this year that it was based on when the moon was _sighted_, not just on a conventional lunar calendar. This leads to very short notice public holidays in a couple of countries AIUI.
I didn't either, but my boss (who is Turkish) mentioned that there was middle-eastern countries where holidays were not totally predictable. This was in the context of some work-day report which had funky options.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that GP is partially correct, in that the lunar sighting is not an individual thing, but done at the communal level by the central authority. It's just that like most religions, Islam has multiple streams, and this there are multiple central authorities.
Is this not how it works? I'm not Muslim, this is what I understood from a Muslim coworker. He also implied that there's some politics involved, in that various Middle Eastern countries align themselves with their political bloc when announcing the day, although any political motivations are "alleged" and not acknowledged.
There's no central authority in Islam like the clergy in Catholism.
However there are legal schools and councils that people trust. Legal schools (or fiqh) were established by famous scholars that nearly everyone recognizes as an expert and were carried on by their students.
From a political standpoint, a lot of Muslims defer to Saudi Arabia because they are the current caretakers of Mecca and Medina.
But generally speaking for everyday normal Muslims they go with whatever their local imam says and go with whatever method the imam used because they are usually the most knowledgeable person around on such matters.
The choice of which community or authority to follow is also a personal preference. People often express their preferences in a way that aligns them tribally in one sphere or another when given the choice, and the lunar calendar is (humorously) not an exception to that.
There are no central authorities, only a menu of organizations and traditions that one can choose from. In some cases there is social pressure to choose one, and that social pressure is sometimes intense enough so that it feels like there is a central authority.
According to Islamic rulings if there’s a global caliphate every muslim in the world is required to obey that (there’s not one since 1915s). But besides that, all of the religion of Islam (rulings, practices) is capable of graceful degradation, scaling down to even just one person. If there was literally one muslim left on the face of the earth, that muslim would not lack anything in his practice of religion, virtousness or his connection with God. There’s no middleman to God like Christian (Catholic?) priests. Similarly if a group of muslims were to crash on an island in a plane accident, they’ll (and are required to) establish islamic order (sharia) there and function all by themselves. Islam is completely decentralized in this way.
My local mosque (and many others in the area) use calculations, but my mom's mosque just a few cities away uses moon sighting. We ended up starting and ending Ramadan at the same time but there was uncertainty on her part until last night.
At the end of the day you just follow whatever mosque you go to. If you want to follow moonsighting but your mosque does calculation, where do you go to celebrate Eid if the days differ?
Personally I wouldn't go to a mosque that uses moonsighting because I like predictability. My boss is Muslim so she would understand but it's still annoying for the company if I just went "I'm off tomorrow byeee" the night before.
I imagine some Muslim countries differ in the same way (some use calc some use sighting), though I can't say off the top of my head which countries use calculation.
The charitable case is that while something might be predictable, it's our conscious interaction that's important to these religions, not the theoretical knowledge.
The uncharitable case is that religions derive a lot of power from being able to fix time, and this demonstrates their sovereignty over people's lives in this sphere.
Ah so it is just a preference? Is there usually an actual difference on when Eid is between the final "traditional" observation and the predicted calculations?
There are no official Muslim institutions, most people follow their congregation or teacher. The choice of who or what to follow is also a personal preference.
In Torah, months start when a crescent moon is sighted with an unaided eye without a binocular. They have moon charts like this in their calendars. https://eliyah.com/calendar2023.pdf There’s one holy day that starts on the first day of the seventh month.
Ramadan is one clear case where being in a place with many coreligionists obviously improves the experience of practising that religion. one can meditate alone, pray alone, even keep kosher as a small minority, but fasting amongst people with snacks and big gulps all day is harder than all together.
