We need a calendar

You would think that after 1400 years we would have one that we can take for granted, but no dice. Eyeballing the moon (howling optional) is the thing to do and messing up people’s lives is not even a consideration.

Hang on a minute though, we do have an agreed calendar called Umm al-Qura (mother of all villages, referring to Mecca of course) which is based on scientific calculation of the moon’s phases. Most Muslim countries also publish their own Hijri calendars based on Umm al-Qura and Bahrain for instance even goes to the extend of forbidding any printing press to print an “unauthorised” version of the calendar. I don’t know if something prompted this ruling in the past, but controlling this is a good thing.

So why doesn’t anyone pay any heed to this? Even the government throws it out of the window in favour of eyeballing the moon when it comes to important religious ceremonies like Eid. Don’t they believe in the scientific methods they used to set the calendar in the first place? The government should in my view be the first to set an example of using its own calendar and do away with this eyeballing lark.

Confusion reigns supreme in the Muslim world, that is taken as a given, a scientific fact. The other fact is that everything is politicised. Look at the results of the poll I have put up, only a measly 7% believed that they should follow the universal Muslim calendar! Only 7 votes out of 95 chose to believe in the calendar? What’s wrong with these people? Ok those are the people who chose specifically to believe in the calendar, while 29 other voters would observe Eid based on scientific observation, but then, the Umm al-Qura calendar is based on science, does that mean they do not believe in who produces it? They don’t hold its producers in trust? Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and lump this figure with the Umm al-Qura vote and we arrive at 38% of the voters believe in a calendar.

But look at the others, a full two-thirds majority threw scientific facts out of the window and chose to politically follow either the country they belong to, or their clerics! As every Muslim country now depends on eyeballs to decide when to fast or celebrate a month’s beginning and end, then that leads me to believe that they either do not believe in set calendars or they chose to abrogate that responsibility of decision to the state. Likewise with people who depend on the say-so of their clerics.

With this kind of polarisation I have no hope of ever knowing for sure when I can go out and celebrate Eid and wish my friends and family Eid Mubarak. I bet that I’m not alone in this boat.

What’s to be done about this situation though? How can we convince our governments to stick to their own calendars which have been scientifically produced? Should we continue to abrogate more responsibilities to clerics or our governments when it is the right thing to just accept and follow a calendar? Why do we even need either to tell us what we already know and is presented to us in clear black and white?

The truth is they (and the vast majority) of the world don’t give a tuppence about the Hijri calendar no matter how it was devised. That’s why in every single government (all of them to the most part) document the date is put as Hijri, then you will always find the corresponding Gregorian date under it! What does that tell you? It tells me that the Hijri date is a mere nicety, nothing more and nothing less. We have to use it but don’t believe it. We’ll just put it up as a nod to our culture, but actually using it for real? Are you kidding? Forget about it! How can you believe a calendar that you cannot use for anything real? Can you start planting crops based on it? How about predicting when the summer months are going to be to take your holidays?

Nope… the Hijri calendar is just part of that thing called tradition, it’ll just be wheeled out whenever we need a good laugh.