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Thursday, September 24, 2009

Why Eid Falls on Different Dates?

In traditional Islamic view, the holy month of Ramazan (29 or 30 days of fasting from dawn till dusk) ends with the arrival of the Eid festival. This happens when a credible source, usually a group of clerics, sit together and try to see the moon, with naked eye. Very often, Eid’s arrival is announced on different days in different areas. Some of the reasons, worked out by top Non-Muslim intellectuals are:

1. Some moon-watchers have bigger eyes than others, covering a greater field of view. Some even have a field of view too large to notice as small an object as the moon. Hence a late Eid!
2. Different clerics have different eyesight values – those with stronger ones see the moon earlier.
3. Married clerics, usually deprived of honey-moon, usually see the moon earlier – an instinctive compensation from the Creator.
4. Weather conditions vary place to place, and bad weather may trick the watcher into believing he is seeing the moon – when, in fact, it’s a curved mass of smoke emitted by druggies a kilometer away.
5. The moon-surveillance team usually sits at night to look at the sky while the moon has, at that time, usually left the horizon to do a part-time job. After all, it hasn’t got all the spare time the clerics enjoy.
6. Memory is ineluctably involved; many a time, the moon is seen a few days later but remembered being seen earlier, and vice versa. 
7. Anti-Islamic forces sometimes bribe the moon to show itself at different times to different observers; creating schism is the point here.
8. At times, the moon is threatened with dire consequences by a group of hungry and fanatic clerics, so the poor thing has to show up in the sky by the given deadline, or else……. 

No matter which of these factors causes the Eid, the festival is always welcome: to everyone, it’s time to eat openly again!