One Community, One Eid Seminar
Al Hijra School, Small Heath Birmingham, UK
Sunday 9th May 1999

Organised by:
Islamic Society of Britain
Al-Hijrah Islamic College
Ex-Boy's Society of Al-Hijrah School Muslim
Doctors and Dentists Association
British Muslim Engineers and Scientists Association

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem

There were 3 sessions:

Session 1.

Following tilawat and an introduction by the chairman Dr M. Hanif, the first speaker, Dr Abduljalil Sajjid gave a talk (in English) entitled "Visibility of the crescent in the light of the Islamic Shariah". He highlighted problems of multiple Eids in the UK. Some points from his talk:

- crescent visibility in UK hampered by weather
- movement of sun and moon can be calculated very accurately
- some Ulema not aware about basic facts regarding the moon
- some communities announce crescent sighting before conjunction
- one cannot condemn calculation, because hisab acceptable from both quranic and sunnah point of view
- great tradition re astronomy amongst Muslim scientists of the past
- discussed implications of certain Hadiths esp the "Umee" hadith
- highlighted the need for a central moonsighting committee in UK

Dr Sajjid's talk was followed by a lively discussion and various members of the Ulema gave their opinions. On the whole there was suport for the use of calculations.

Session 2

This session was chaired by Mohd Zulfiqar. The speaker was Dr Monzur Ahmed and his talk was entitled "Islamic Calendar and Moonsighting". He initially gave a slide presentaion (in English)lasting about 40 minutes which covered...

- Basics of lunar astronomy
- Accuracy of calculations
- Science behind predicting crescent visibility
- History of moonsighting criteria
- Modern sighting criteria
- International Lunar Date Lines
- Role of calculations in moonsighting/islamic calendar

Next, using a laptop PC and digital projector he gave a 20 minute live demonstration of the MoonCalc computer program. He demonstrated the use of the pprogram in obtaining various positional data regarding the moon, drawing visibility maps/parabolas and in predicting the appearance of the crescent from a particular location. An attempt was made to make a live connection to the Internet but this proved unsuccessful.

Again there was lively discussion from the floor. Again Ulemas gave their views.
There was no direct opposition to the use of calculations from the floor.

Session 3

This session was chaired by Br Tahir and Brs Khalid Alvi and Br M. Sakib (headmaster of al Hijra) were amongst those who spoke. After further discussion, various proposals were made. It was agreed to set up a Moonsighting Institute in Birmingham which would collate and collect moonsighting information from UK.