The Ramadan Moon: Sighting or Calculation

At left, from The National, a photo captioned:

Hasan Hariri, a member of the official moon spotting team, uses his telescope to look for the moon to signal the start of Ramadan yesterday. Galen Clarke / The National

I noted yesterday on the eve of Ramadan that there could be some countries who started the month of fasting on a different day than others. It occurs to me that, if I'm really supposed to be explaining the region to those unfamiliar with it, I should discuss how the start of Ramadan is determined and why not all countries may start on the same date, even though I suspect that the vast majority of my readers already understand this.

In fact, I gather that much of the Shi‘ite world consider that Ramadan begins at sundown tonight, and the fast at dawn tomorrow; most of the Sunni world started last night and this morning. Sunnis in Iraq are fasting; their Shi‘ite neighbors start tomorrow.

Why the disagreement? The Muslim calendar is a lunar calendar, and each month has 29 or 30 days. The new month begins with the sighting of the new moon; traditionally this had to be a visual sighting, but if weather or other issues intervene, some countries and legal schools permit using a calendar to predict astronomically when the moon should appear. In any event the month of Sha‘ban, which precedes Ramadan, cannot have more than 30 days, so if there is no moonsighting by the 30th, the next day must be 1 Ramadan, even without a moon sighting.

Confusing? You have no idea: take a look at this page, which shows the various means of calculation different countries use. That page, you may note, is at a website called moonsighting.com, devoted to nothing else. Here are some of the sighting reports.

One may naturally say that this seems extremely haphazard and overly complex. Yet how many Christians have any idea how the date of Easter is determined, or why East and West differ on the date? (Don't get me started.)

So my Ramadan Karim greetings of yesterday are extended to those who begin the month tonight as well as to those who have been fasting since morning.