Muslims across the world celebrate Eid at different times despite precise calculations given by Muhammad (pbuh). Yet changing this would ruin the religion.
How Muslims Calculate Eid
Islam works on a lunar calendar so dates change from year to year. This means that each festival also changes date each year, rather than in the Western calendar where festivals remain on the same date but different days.
Islamic months begin at sunset on the day of visual sighting of the lunar crescent and even though visual sighting is necessary to determine the start of a month, sometimes it is predicted when a crescent is likely to be visible instead of using the visible sighting itself.
The problem is when the prediction process goes wrong.
Different Religious Dates
Sometimes there are anomalies between the agreed dates for festivals. While Muslims agree that one day’s difference is acceptable due to differences in the moon cycle across the world, they generally feel that any more than 24 hours’ difference highlights a problem with the prediction.
Problems
Eid must be performed in one day (24 hours) according to the Shari’ah (Islamic law) but often individual countries will differ within themselves as to when festivals should take place.
Muslims generally take their lead from Saudi Arabia. Other Muslims across the world will then take their lead from the authorities in their own countries.
Some Muslims will take the start of a new month from the first visible sign of the moon; others will begin from when the moon should appear based on scientific calculation, but before the moon is actually seen.
Muslims believe it is very important to be clear about the dates. However, this is a very thorny question because it involves dealing with different authorities, some political and some religious, with other factors also involved. Yet the solution is easy provided there is enough political will to sort it out.
A Solution?
The sighting of the moon is the mark determining when an occasion like Eid is due. Yet if Muslims adopted a scientific method, which the Prophet recommended them to do, this would help to resolve the problem. As the Qur’an says: The sun and the moon run on their exactly computed courses (Surah 55:5).
There are no such arguments about prayer times between different countries or within countries because Muslims follow the ‘daily sun-clock’ which was created by Allah to observe the time. Similarly, Allah also created the ‘monthly moon-clock’ for distinguishing between months.
Surely following a religious festival is the important aspect for Muslims and whether some countries celebrate a day or two after others is almost immaterial. At least they celebrate it and have a method for calculating the start of the lunar cycle. Scientific calculations might be more useful to create a more uniform celebration across the world between Muslims, but it is the tradition and custom of lunar calculations which gives Islam something special and by taking this away, Muslims would erode an important part of their distinctive history.
