Coming from Pakistan, moon sighting conflicts for the start of Ramadan is something I am very familiar with. However, the conflict there occurs invariably when a certain part of KP province (formerly NWFP) sights the moon and announce the start of Ramadan while the majority of the country awaits for government announcement. In any case, there is no dispute officially and especially no dispute at all within my home city for that matter.

Therefore, having two mosques within a 3 mile radius of each other and announcing different start dates of Ramadan came as a bit of a shocker. Almost all mosques in London, including those in East London announced the start of Ramadan 2010 from Wednesday (Aug 11) while some in South London announced Thursday as the starting day. Even in South London (Tooting area) two mosques opposite each other were in dispute! Near my place, the large mosques close by are in Harrow or Watford, and both were in dispute. Central mosques in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and elsewhere were unanimous on Aug 11 start and since majority of the places were starting that day I decided to go with it.

A bit of research in this matter reveals that there are several groups within who have following. One group has tied the start and end dates to Makkah. The opponents question why not then have prayer timings the same as Makkah then? Another group takes the data from observatory (which is quite accurate to the minute of moon’s appearance) and decides the start/end dates. This group faces criticism that the moon should be sighted by naked eye and not by scientific data. And then there is this group which follows Pakistan (or just adds +1 to Makkah’s starting dates).

Again, just like the conclusion of Fajr timing confusion, this boils down to following what you want, or following your masjid. Personally, I’d think that tying the start and end dates to Makkah is a plausible solution if you cannot agree on what to do, because that can act as a reference, but not any other country or city. However, I don’t see anything wrong with using scientific data for moon prediction because this is quite reliable these days. Also, those who criticise this may like to answer why we use similar sort of data for prayer timing calculations instead of watching the sun set by naked eye for example? That, to me, is an inconsistency. In any case, I’ve been told that scientific prediction and Makkah’s starting dates mostly coincide, therefore majority goes for that. There is some sort of committee of mosques as well which decided to unite all mosques few years ago. I believe that having more than 80% mosques under one umbrella is still a success but clearly, more needs to be done.

Ramadan Kareem to all! May Allah bless us this month, accept our worship and forgive our sins. Also remember the flood victims in your prayer. They really need help.