Commitment to Qur’ān: Allāh, Most High, says, “Therefore, whoever of you sights (shahida, lit. eye-witnesses) the month, let him fast it.”(Qur’ān, 2: 185)
Commitment to the Sunnah: Bukhari narrates that the messenger of Allāh said “Fast for its [the new moon] sighting (ru’yah, lit. its naked-eye sighting) and break for its sighting, and if it is covered under cloud then complete the count of Shaʿbān as thirty days.” Note the clear and unambiguous directive in this hadith that the new moon must actually be seen in order to start the new month. Moreover, the Messenger of Allāh states that we must observe 30 days of the month of Shaʿbān if vision of the new moon is obscured by clouds, even if we know that the new moon is present behind the cloud cover.
Commitment to Unity on the Sunnah and Abstaining from Reprehensible Innovations in Matters of Religion: Abu Dawūd and Tirmidhī narrate that the messenger of Allāh said “I command you to fear Allāh, and to listen to and obey your legitimate leaders. Whosoever of you should live after me, shall see much strife, so incumbent upon you is my sunnah and the sunnah of my rightly-guided successors. Hold fast to it, and bite down on it with your molar teeth. Beware of newly invented matters, for every innovation in religion is misguidance.” Note that the messenger of Allāh, and all four of his rightly guided successors, may Allāh be pleased with them, observed the sunnah of moonsighting.
Fourteen Centuries of Scholarship: The above-mentioned four successors of the Messenger of Allāh, Abū Bakr, ʿUmar,‘Uthmān and ʿAlī, the rest of the companions, and reputable scholars of the Muslim Ummah from all four orthodox sunnī schools of thought throughout the past fourteen centuries have by scholarly consensus, or Ijmaʿ accepted moonsighting as the way to keep the sacred calendar of Islām, and have consistently rejected calculations as a public methodology for the keeping of the sacred calendar. Note that this is despite the fact that scientific calculation methods for the timing of the birth of the new moon have been known to Muslims for many centuries, as astronomical calculation is an ancient knowledge known to ancient peoples from at least the time of the Babylonians, who practiced calculations as early as the 18th century BC.
Disparate Nature of Prayer and Ramadan Timings: The fact that it is permissible to rely on calculations for prayer times has no bearing on the issue of crescent sightings as they are based on completely different phenomena. The prayer times are established solely on the position of the sun relative to the earth and can be calculated with 100% accuracy while not a single prediction algorithm has been developed that accounts for the several factors that affect crescent visibility. Moreover, they carry completely different legal rulings. There is no verse of the Qur’ān or ḥadīth of the messenger of Allāh that unambiguously command the naked eye sighting of the prayer times; from the point of view of a specialist in the law of the sacred sharīʿah, the two matters are completely disparate and cannot be compared with one another.
New Position: The ISNA Fiqh Council made an unprecedented and significant change in their Ramadan and ʿĪd policy in June 2006. They have decided, without any precedent in the sunnah, that there is no requirement of moon sighting at all. Preemptive declarations of Ramadan and the two ʿĪds have been made for the next ten years based solely on calculations, while Chicago Hilal in actuality maintains the same position that ISNA itself had up to this point held.
Inconsistent Policy with regards to Eid Dates: The official position of the Fiqh Council of ISNA is to go with astronomical calculations for ʿĪd al-Fiṭr, whereas they adopt the Saudi sighting for ʿĪd al-Aḍḥā. They do not apply a consistent methodology for the keeping of the sacred calendar, which can lead to the distortion of the sacred Islamic calendar resulting in either 28 or 31 day months.
Strident Opposition From Scholars in North America and Around the World: Even all the members of ISNA’s Fiqh Council itself did not agree on this major change, including Shaykh Mokhtar Maghraoui who, in fact, submitted his resignation over this issue and wrote a 27 page scholarly rebuttal of the new policy. Many other scholars and Islamic Sharīʿah Councils have also denounced this decision including Shaykh Hamza Yusuf of the Zaytuna College who wrote a detailed 75 page refutation of the ISNA’s Fiqh Council’s decision as well as Shaykh Mohammed Amin Kholwadia of Darul Qasim.
Commitment to Islam before convenience: It may appear that ISNA’s Fiqh Council is attempting to unite the Ummah but such an appearance is arbitrary; in fact they are causing more fragmentation in the ummah all over North America. It is therefore our view that while unity is of paramount importance and every attempt should be made to make the practice of Islām easy for the people, unity and ease have to be achieved within the framework of the sunnah and not outside of it.
