The Astronomical Calculations and Ramadan

The debate of the Moon sighting with the naked eyes versus the possibility of using mathematical calculation goes back to the first century of the Muslim era. In fact, this debate has taken multiple twists and turns in the Jewish community centuries before its systematic deliberations by the Muslim scholarship. Given its long history, many of the arguments presented by the proponents and opponents of both views have been almost standardized. The nature of this debate and the reasoning process among the Muslim scholars is a bit different from their counterparts’ among the Jews, as the Muslims have two divinely inspired sources of law which are historically authenticated. The Islamic discourse regarding this debate has predominantly revolved around the verses of the Holy Qur’an and narrations of the Holy Prophet (Peace be upon him). The classical Muslim jurisprudential discourse is heavily dependent upon the Qur’an and Sunnah.

Consequently, most of the traditional arguments for and against these positions are quite standardized and recurring in the Islamic literature of Tafsir, Ahadith, Fiqh and Fatawa.

The main arguments of those who oppose use of calculations in confirming or negating the month of Ramadan, can be summarized in the following main points: [1]

1: The Qur’an (in view of this group) categorically requires physical Moon sighting (with the naked eye) to confirm the beginning and ending of the devotional Islamic months such as Ramadan and Zil-Hajjah. The act of “witnessing the month of Ramadan” stated in the Qur’an means actually sighting the new Moon of Ramadan with the human eye. The Qur’anic term for the Crescent Moon is al-Hilal which, they argue, literally means “the sighted Moon.”

2: The Prophetic traditions, which reach to the level of infallibility, also require unconditional commitment to the physical sighting of the new Moon by the naked eyes (to begin and end the month of Ramadan). There are only two definitive methods of confirming or negating the Islamic months which are approved by the Prophetic injunctions. These are: the sighting by the naked eye or the completion of 30 days.

3: Muslim scholarship over the centuries has accepted these two categorical methods as normative in nature. The jurists have roundly rejected all efforts aimed at the utilization of mathematically computed astronomical calculations and vehemently opposed those Muslim scholars who employed calculations, including some known jurists, in part or in total. Some of these scholars such as Ibn al-Shikhir, Ibn Surayj and al-Subki were otherwise given tremendous respect and appreciation for their knowledge and piety. Rejection of the astronomical calculations has been an established norm in all the known schools of Islamic jurisprudence including the Ja’afari school of thought.

4: Deployment of the astronomical calculations has not been advocated or accepted by the majority of jurists. It has been accepted by a small minority based upon some misguided, or weak at the best, interpretations. Even this minority opinion does not permit bypassing the physical sighting altogether. They only allow the use of calculations in cases of obscurities such as clouds getting in the way.

5: Physical eye sighting of the crescent moon has been the universal Prophetic practice. The Jewish people were also required to follow the same method in determining their lunar months, and they were known to have followed this practice in history. Over time, they changed this divinely required Prophetic practice in an effort to synchronize their religious festivals and schedules with the solar civil calendars of secular authorities such as emperors. Now, following a calculated calendar for Islamic months is nothing short of imitating the Jews in their utter misguidance and pitfall.

6: Some contemporary scholars contend that the pre-Islamic Arabs as well as Muslims of the first generation were quite capable of employing astronomical calculations in determining their lunar months. Muslims emphatically rejected this method due to crystal clear Prophetic prohibitions regarding this matter. The science of astronomy in the past had reached its climax among the Muslim scholars due to their special interest in monitoring the motions of celestial bodies such as the Sun, Moon and other stars. Some of the known Muslim jurists such as Imam al-Qarrafi, Imam Ibn al-Arabi and many others were also astronomers of the high caliber who could establish precise calendars for lunation, recognize conjunctions, and predict possible sight ability of the new moon. In spite of that, these jurists did not resort to deployment of astronomical calculations in regards to Ramadan and other Islamic months. The science of observational astronomy had not developed much over the past centuries. Consequently, current dependence of the Fiqh Council upon the scientifically proven astronomical calculations to fix an Islamic calendar is not progression, but rather it is sheer backwardness.[2]

I would like to state from the onset that all of these vehemently propounded and popularly supported arguments do not stand ground against an in depth analysis. The Qur’an never required physical Moon sighting but asked for “witnessing the month”. It is an agreed upon fact that the Qur’anic phrase “whoever witnessed the month” means whoever is present in his residential place and gets to know about Ramadan’s arrival through any kind of knowledge, including sighting but not confined to sighting. The Prophetic reports, in reality, require “certainty” vis-a-vis arrival and end of the month of Ramadan. The physical sighting of the new Moon was prescribed as a mean to achieve that certainty. Actual sighting has not been the objective of fasting. The Qura’nic phrase “al-ahillah”, is the plural of “al-hilal.” The word “hilal”, in the Arabic language, denotes “beginning part of something like rain, announcement, cry of joy, raising out loud voices”. Al-hilal has been culturally and metaphorically used to symbolize the new Moon of the first two to seven nights and then the last two nights of the month. There are conflicting reports about the actual Prophetic response when he (Peace be upon him) first time looked at the new Moon. One Hadith states that the Prophet (Peace be upon him) used to turn his face away from the new Moon and seek Allah’s protection from its evils. The other popular report indicates that the Prophet (Peace be upon him) would recite specific supplications at sighting the crescent Moon. The Hadith authorities such as Imams al-Bukhari and al-Muslim never reported any such supplications and, Imam Ibn Dawud clearly stated that both the above mentioned purported Prophetic reports were untrustworthy. The claims that, the method of completing thirty days in case of obscurities (ikma’l), is the only normative alternate (second to actual sighting), is also debatable.

There is no Ijama’a (consensus of the scholars of the Muslim Ummah) that using astronomical calculation in confirming or negating the month of Ramadan is illegal (Haram) especially in case of obscurities. There are several claims of such an Ijma’a in our Fiqhi literature but, it does not exist in reality. The debate about validity and non-validity of the mathematical calculations vis-à-vis Ramadan has been going on since the Successors times i.e., since the time of the first generation Muslims. The majority of the classical jurists have aggressively opposed use of mathematical calculations due to multiple reasons. There is a long list of possible valid reasons for which the classical juristic discourse has been so roundly against the use of calculations, especially in the matters concerning faith and ‘Ibadah. There are instances in our history when, in case of atmospheric obscurities, righteous people like Mutarrif bin Abdillah Ibn al-Shikhir, Imam Ibn Surayj (d. 306 AH), Ibn Qutaybah, Imam Taj al-Din al-Subki (d. 683- 756 AH) and others have actually deployed mathematical calculations either in confirming or negating the month of Ramadan. They were rebuked for such a progressive step by many of their colleagues and the later classical jurists, again for multiple reasons (as will be discussed later in this book).

The use of mathematically computed astronomical calculations, in matters of religion, has been dubbed as a Jewish innovation. The fact of the matter is that the fixed Jewish calendar is an intercalated calendar. The Jewish Rabbis exerted their efforts to synchronize their lunar calendar with the solar calendar for the purpose of celebrating their religious festivals during specific seasons of the year and, also to harmonize their holidays with the civil holidays. The pre-Qur’anic Arabs did the same. They used to intercalate extra days and an extra thirteenth month to their lunar calendar almost after every three years so as to force the dates of Hajj fall during specific seasons that were good for their traveling and business. This way the sacred time of Hajj got compromised and the Hajj was performed in those lunar months which actually were not the months of Hajj. The Prophet (Peace be upon him) insisted upon bringing the time back to its original form and stipulated that the new month be started with actual sighting of the crescent Moon and not with the arbitrarily intercalated mathematical calculations.

Ismail K. Poonawala, the author of article on “Ramadan” in Encarta, explains that: “In the pre-Islamic Arabic calendar, the month of Ramadan fell during the heat of summer. The word Ramadan means “scorcher” in Arabic. The early Arabic calendar, like the current Islamic calendar, was lunar. Because a lunar month has only 29 or 30 days, a year of 12 lunar months falls short of the 365 days in a solar calendar. In the pre-Islamic calendar, the lunar months kept their place in the seasons by the insertion of an extra month every two or three years. The Islamic calendar abolished this practice and fixed the Islamic year at 12 months totaling 354 days. As a result Ramadan occurs about 11 days earlier each year, and it rotates through the seasons in a cycle totaling about 33 years.” [3]

Therefore, implying scientifically developed precise astronomical calculations to confirm or negate the actual new Moon of the Islamic lunar months (hence the original sacred time) would not come under the rhetoric of Jewish imitation in the matters of Din. It does not change the sacred time of the established lunar months. In reality it helps us determine them with precision and certainty.

Finally, the science of astronomy has been developed tremendously over the past few centuries. The ancient Babylonian as well as Greek astronomy was based upon wrong understanding of our solar system. The Ptolemaic astronomical principles ruled the world since the 2nd century AD. “The Ptolemaic theory held that Earth is stationary and at the center of the universe; closest to Earth is the Moon, and beyond it, extending outward, are Mercury, Venus, and the Sun in a straight line, followed successively by Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the so-called fixed stars.” [4]

Muslims were good observers and few of them were proficient astronomers. They tried to fix many aspects of the faulty Ptolemaic astronomy. They did not fully succeed as the Ptolemaic Geo centric theory of the universe was founded on wrong footing in the first place. “Greek astronomy was transmitted eastward to the Syrians, the Hindus, and the Arabs. The Arabian astronomers compiled new star catalogs in the 9th and 10th centuries and subsequently developed tables of planetary motion. Although the Arabs were good observers, they made few useful contributions to astronomical theories. In the 13^th century, Arabic translations of Ptolemy’s Almagest filtered into Western Europe, stimulating interest in astronomy. Initially, Europeans were content to make tables of planetary motions, based on Ptolemy’s system, or to write short popular digests of his theory. Later the German philosopher and mathematician Nicholas of Cusa and the Italian artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci questioned the basic assumptions of the centrality and immobility of Earth.”

Fred Lawrence Whipple and Vera C. Rubin show that, “After the decline of classical Greek culture Arabian astronomers attempted to perfect the system by adding new epicycles to explain unpredicted variations in the motions and positions of the planets. These efforts failed, however, to resolve the many inconsistencies in the Ptolemaic system, which was finally superseded in the 16th century by the Copernican system.” [5]

The systematic explanation that the universe is solo centric and not geo centric is credited to the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus who, in 1543, explained the movement of the planets around the sun. “The Copernican system advanced the theories that the earth and the planets are all revolving in orbits around the sun, and that the earth is spinning on its north-south axis from west to east at the rate of one rotation per day. These two hypotheses superseded the Ptolemaic system, which had been the basis of astronomical theory until that time. Publication of the Copernican system stimulated the study of astronomy and mathematics and laid the basis for the discoveries of the German astronomer Johannes Kepler and the British astronomer Sir Isaac Newton.” [6]

I am not denying here the fact that the medieval Muslim centuries had witnessed flourishing of scientific development and progress in many fields including astronomy. Their astronomical discoveries were hampered due to several innate mistakes in the foundational principles of the Ptolemaic theory. The medieval scientists also lacked most of our modern day highly sophisticated technological instruments. These amazingly advanced tools such as high level telescopes, well equipped laboratories, NASA’s expeditions to the Moon surface (Space Exploration) and many other modern discoveries have helped astronomy to branch out into Gamma-Ray Astronomy; X-Ray Astronomy; Ultraviolet Astronomy; Infrared Astronomy; Radio Astronomy; Radar Astronomy and many other helpful areas. There are countless projects which have entirely focused upon the earth-moon relationship and moon’s movement in its orbit around the earth. For instance since 1957, the IGY (International Geophysical Year) project has been studying moon motions and positions with powerful Markowitz cameras at over twenty observatories around the globe. These astronomical calculations are erudite and precise. “These calculations are aided by precise observations of the moon's position with the Markowitz camera. Such moon-position cameras are being utilized for this work at 20 observatories around the world”[7]