Moon clouds celebration for Muslim community

In preparation for Eid al-Fitr, the celebration that ends the holy month of Ramadan, local Muslims have purchased new clothes, prepared food and rented a hangar at the former naval station at Sand Point big enough to accommodate a communitywide prayer service.

But local Muslims, like those across the country, may be celebrating the holiday on two different days this week — either Thursday or Friday.

Muslims follow the lunar calendar and a religious tenet that says holidays such as Eid can start only after the sighting of a new, or crescent, moon.

The question is: Do local Muslims begin celebrating when the crescent moon is seen by someone in, say, Saudi Arabia? Or only when it's seen by a Muslim in the United States, which could be on a different night? In other words, should local Muslims follow a global sighting of the moon or one closer to home?

It's a question raised in almost every Muslim community in America, affecting everything from logistics to more spiritual concerns.

"Unity in Islam is the most important aspect," said Hisham Farajallah, president of a committee that runs Idriss Mosque at Northgate. "To bring the people together, to unite them, takes higher priority than anything else."

Yet, with the exponential growth of Muslims in this region — all hailing from different parts of the world and with perhaps different beliefs on moon sighting — "what's happening is we are getting further and further divided on this thing," said Aziz Junejo, a local Muslim community leader and contributing religion columnist for The Seattle Times.

The requirement for a moon sighting dates back more than 1,400 years to the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims believe he said that fasting for Ramadan should begin when the new moon is first sighted in the ninth month of the lunar year, and end with the sighting of the next new moon.

The dispute comes in the interpretation: whether Islam requires that someone local see the new moon, or whether it counts if a Muslim anywhere in the world sees it.

When Junejo was growing up as one of the few Muslims in Seattle, families here followed the global sighting criterion.

"It gave you such a feeling of unity when you knew everybody in the world was fasting or breaking their fast at the same time," he said.

But over the next few decades, as more Muslims came to this area, some celebrated on the same day as their home country; others believed only local sightings by the naked eye would count. And even among themselves, there has been disagreement over what "local" means — whether it could be a sighting anywhere in the U.S. or whether it has to be in Washington state or even just in the Puget Sound area.

In 1993, Farajallah got Seattle-area leaders to agree that this part of the country did not have enough experts to verify truly local sightings, and that the next-best alternative to a global sighting was one anywhere in the U.S. The leaders essentially decided to adhere to official moon-sighting reports of the Islamic Shura Council of North America.

Most Muslim communities in the U.S. now follow the determinations of this council, a coordinating body for several national Muslim organizations, and the Fiqh Council of North America, a panel of legal experts.

A Muslim in the U.S. can call the organizations to report a moon sighting. The groups then verify the authenticity of the sighting by asking the caller such specifics as when he or she saw the moon and in what portion of the sky. If the sighting is deemed credible, the word is spread and local mosques that adhere to the determination put out the message to their members.

Nevertheless, some local mosques and individual families still follow the global sighting standard, and may observe the start of Ramadan or Eid on a different day.

Farajallah, who brokered the 1993 agreement, said he is in favor of following the global sighting criterion and might call local mosque leaders together again to see if they're willing to consider that.

Back in 1993, he said, when the Muslim community was still relatively small, a communitywide Eid prayer might have taken place in a rented 3,000-square-foot school gym. Now there are far more Muslims in the area, and venues that can hold up to 20,000 are needed.

Going with global sightings would give local organizers 24 hours' lead time to prepare for such events, rather than the 12 hours a local sighting would give, since crescent-moon sightings in North America have recently been about a day after those in the Middle East, Farajallah said.

Junejo and his family also follow global sightings to mark the start of holidays, though he celebrates with the community, too.

Eid is about Muslims celebrating after a month of fasting, and he worries that divisiveness over moon sightings could erode that.

"I hate the feeling that half the world" is celebrating on one day, and the rest on another, he said.

Janet I. Tu: 206-464-2272 or jtu@seattletimes.com