Sighting the new moon is usually a quiet affair in Pakistan for 10 months of the Hijri calendar. Yet when it comes to the Ramazan and Shawwal crescents, this country’s divines make a spectacle of it. An effort on Friday by the Senate’s standing committee on Religious Affairs to try and ensure the entire nation observes the start of Ramazan and the celebration of Eidul Fitr on the same day failed as clerics ended up taking pot-shots at each other. Scholars from Peshawar’s Qasim Khan Mosque an institution that has often disagreed with the central Ruet-i-hilal Committee’s decisions said they would not accept the committee’s authority; Mufti Popalzai, representing the Peshawar mosque, accused the committee of being a ‘government body’ and chided it for ‘disregarding Sharia’. The suggestion by a committee member that Met office data should be taken into account when deciding on the moon resulted in an ugly spat, with the Qasim Khan contingent saying science could not be trusted in this matter. A subcommittee will now meet to try and bring together the seemingly irreconcilable ulema.
Moon-sighting is a strange, perennial dilemma in Pakistan. Condemning the Ruet-i-Hilal Committee over 10 days before the start of Ramazan is jumping the gun. But as this is a nation that has seen three Eids in one year, the possibility of two perhaps denotes progress. There may be a sectarian angle to the spat, as Ruet Chief Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rahman and the gentle men from the Qasim Khan mosque belong to two different schools of thought. However, the Ruet-i-Hilal Committee does feature members from all the major Muslim schools of thought from across Pakistan. Factionalism and disagreement for the sake of disagreement should be shunned. If it helps, the committee should meet in Peshawar in order to strengthen unity.
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