News: Another Muddle at Eid [2005]
The Light (UK), December 2005 Issue (pp. 1–2)
As we expected from past experience, those who insist that the new moon must be sighted by human eye declared the sighting of the moon on Wednesday 2nd November [2005] when it was impossible that anyone could have seen it. Thus, many organizations in the U.K. and U.S.A. held Eid on the 3rd on this basis. U.K. organizations such as the Central London Mosque followed the announcement from Saudi Arabia in declaring Eid to be on the 3rd. In the U.S.A. the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) declared Eid as being on the 3rd on the basis of a reported sighting within the U.S.A. The website www.moonsighting.net, which bitterly criticises this decision, informs us of the following facts. Until the evening of 2nd November ISNA had been announcing that it would be impossible to see the new moon that evening. Yet late that evening it accepted a report of a sighting from Arizona and declared Eid to be on the 3rd. The report was that one man, in a large group of members of the Muslim public looking out for the crescent, claimed that he saw it for a few seconds. The claim of a lone witness, presumably not an expert but an ordinary member of the Muslim public, was accepted against the unanimous opinion of astronomers. We further learn from this website that the orientation of the crescent as reported by this observer is the opposite of the orientation that the new lunar crescent always has. A new moon is shaped like a thin circular arc pointing downwards towards the direction of the sun which has set just before it. This is obvious since the sun which is illuminating the moon is lower than the moon at that time. However, this observer reported the shape of the crescent as
“going from 7 o’clock to 2 o’clock”,
meaning that it was pointing upwards, away from the sun!
What a tragedy, that the people whose forefathers pioneered the science of astronomy a thousand years ago are today shunning that very branch of knowledge and trusting the flawed observations of ordinary individuals who have no knowledge whatsoever of the laws that govern the movements of heavenly bodies. The same organizations also publish books and articles telling the world how the Quran has foretold the discoveries of modern science. Why are they then so opposed to using the results of that science for pre-determining the new moon, the science whose discoveries, they proclaim, are supported by the Quran?