How can we worship Allah (swt) without understanding the workings of His Magnificent Universe.

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem

With the following Aayats of the Qur’an, Allah (swt) has given us a mandate to understand the heavenly bodies as part of our worship.

• He it is that cleaveth The Day-Break (from the dark): He makes the night For rest and tranquillity, And the sun and moon For the reckoning (of time): Such is the judgment And ordering of (Him), The exalted in Power, The Omniscient.
  Sura 6 (An'am), verses 96.
  
  
• It is He Who maketh The stars (as beacons) for you, That ye may guide yourselves, With their help, Through the dark spaces Of land and sea: We detail Our Signs For people who know.
  Sura 6 (An'am), verses 97.

Unfortunately, every year, we are not among the people who know, nor those who can tell time, and stumbling through darkness we suffer every Islamic holiday in confusion, disunity and, ultimately, our own spiritual undoing.

Our problems are two-fold:

1. We fail to understand, or we ignore, the simplest of religious instructions:
   "And hold fast, all together, by the rope which Allah (stretches out for you), and be not divided among yourselves" (Quran, Sura 3, v. 103). Or,
   "Do not fast unless you see the crescent (of Ramadan), and do not give up fasting until you see the crescent (of Shawwal)" (Sahih Al-Bukhari, Vol. 3, para. 130). Or,
   "Read (Seek knowledge), in the name of thy Lord and Cherisher Who created" (Quran, Sura 96, v. 1).
   
   
2. The same ignorance and disobedience in ourselves (we should not be surprised) has permeated our religious institutions and governments. Imams of the Mosques and leaders of our communities who decide on Islamic dates, do not appear to have a basic understanding of how the heavenly bodies move, nor what observations from them mean. Governments, who forgot how to reckon time, have turned to the West and asked them for advice that is inconsistent with Islam. And a large number of the rest of us have followed unquestioningly along behind.

A glance in the encyclopedia will tell us that the moon travels around the earth on average every 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 2.8 seconds. A day must, however, be a whole number (a 24 hour spin of the earth on its axis, from one sunset to another, is the Islamic definition of a day).

Hence the length of a lunar month is either 29 days (40 percent of the time) or 30 days (60 percent of the time), and no other length. The number of days is consistent with the saying of the Prophet of Allah (pbuh):

" The month is like this and this, i.e., sometimes of 29 days and sometimes of 30 days"
(Sahih Al-Bukhari, Vol. 3, para. 137).

The new moon is said to be born when it crosses a line between the earth and the sun. At that moment the moon is invisible to us, because its black side is facing earth. After about 18 to 24 hours (on average, one day), the moon moves roughly 12 degrees in its circular motion around the earth, sunlight reflects off its outer edge and, just after sunset and the start of a new day, the new crescent moon becomes visible on earth (that night and the following day are the first day of the new Islamic month). With the passage of time, the new crescent moon grows larger until it is white and full; then in the second half of the month the moon begins to shrink and finally disappears.

These phases of the moon are consistent with Allah's words:

"And the Moon -- We have measured for her mansions (to traverse) till she returns like the old (and withered) lower part of a date-stalk."
(Quran, Sura 36, verse 39).

The problem for us in the West is that, hours after the Middle East declares a crescent sighting, we often still do not see the crescent even when the sky is clear. Because the moon must grow larger with the passage of time, our failure to see it is a direct refutation that any correct sighting took place (and an obvious proof that 2 or more witnesses can be false). If we nonetheless follow these false witnesses when the moon is not visible to us, we are disobeying the instructions of Allah's Prophet. This is substantiated by a companion of the Prophet (blessings on them): Ibn Abbas rejected an eye witness from Syria and the declaration of the Muslim ruler there (Mu awiyah) because the moon was not seen in his town of Medina, saying "This is as the Messenger (pbuh) ordered us to do."

Fortunately we now have the methodology to calculate and predict, for many years in advance, when and where the new crescent moon will first appear. These predictions have been matched by actual sightings every month for the last twelve years.

For the end of Ramadhaan this year, visibility maps indicated that the crescent will first be seen on January 28 in the Pacific Ocean midway between Los Angeles and Hawaii. However, the chance for false positive sightings loomed large, and for this reason data was circulated well in advance to prepare the community from making any mistakes. We prayed that we would not have a repeat of Ramadan 1414 (March 13, 1994), when most of our community broke its fast based on two uncorroborated witnesses (with wrong descriptions according to astronomers), despite the fact that more than ten hours later 1,000+ witnesses all across America, in clear weather, failed to see the crescent, when the crescent would be expected to be much brighter and therefore easier to see.

Having made the effort to "guide ourselves" we have to remind ourselves why it was worth it.

Why it is important to be united. Why it is important to be accurate. Why we are worshipping Allah (swt) only when we understand the workings of His Magnificent Universe. For this reassurance, we close with Allah's beautiful words:

Sura 91 (Al Shams), verses 1-10

1. By the Sun And its (glorious splendor);
2. By the Moon As it follows (the Sun);
3. By the Day as it Shows up (the Sun's) glory;
4. By the Night as it Conceals it;
5. By the Firmament And its (wonderful) structure;
6. By the Earth And its (wide) expanse;
7. By the Soul, And the proportion and order Given to it;
8. And its enlightenment As to its wrong And its right --
9. Truly he succeeds That purifies it,
10. And he fails That corrupts it!

From all of us here at the World Federation, we would like to extend our very best wishes to you, and all of your families, a very wonderful, bountiful and spiritual Ramadhaan and Eid!