IT is quite obvious from the way that Eid was celebrated in Pakistan and around the world last week that the Muslim Ummah is far from ready to embark on an Islamic Renaissance by accepting or adopting one single method of calculating the Islamic calendar in place of separate naked-eye moon sightings.

If it was the first time that Eid was celebrated on three different days in different regions and localities in Pakistan last week (instead of the usual two different days), then it is probably also a record that Eid 2006 was celebrated on four different days in different countries the world over.

The Muslim countries which celebrated Eid on October 22 were Nigeria, Senegal and Tanzania. Most other Muslim countries celebrated Eid either on October 23 or on October 24.

Those who celebrated Eid on Oct 23 were Bahrain, Djibouti, Iraq (Sunnis), Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkey and UAE) and those who celebrated on Oct 24 were Algeria, Brunei, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq (Shiites), Jordan, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, Oman, Syria and Yemen.

Many Muslim communities in western nations including those in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Holland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, UK, Ukraine, and the US also celebrated Eid on Oct 23, while others in Germany, India, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa and Sri Lanka celebrated Eid on Oct 24.

Apart from Pakistan, Eid was also celebrated on more than one day in different localities in many other countries, e.g., Nigeria on Oct 22 and 23, Tanzania on Oct 22, 23 and 25 and Iraq on Oct 23 and 24. Eid was also marked on different days by different Muslim communities in India (Oct 23 and 24), Australia (Oct 23 and 24) and the UK (Oct 23 and 24).

Different countries and Muslim communities have long been having different lunar calendars because they adopt different methods of deciding on the beginning of the Islamic months. Saudi Arabia determines its lunar month based on moon sighting after sunset in Makkah and many countries simply follow Saudi Arabia, e.g., Qatar, Kuwait, UAE and Bahrain.

In the early 1970s, an international Islamic Committee was set up to look into the ambitious objective of establishing a unified and uniform predetermined global Islamic calendar. The committee, which met in Islamabad, recommended that such a global Islamic calendar be based on the position of the moon with respect to Makkah. This decision, however, was not or could not be enforced by all Muslim countries.

Some Muslim countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Oman and Morocco, began to establish authoritative review panels to ascertain the beginning of every lunar month based on actual sighting of the moon in the country. There are yet other Muslim countries — Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia— which use both moon sighting as well as astronomical calculations to verify the exact time of the visibility of the moon.

Since the 1990s however, there has been a move among Muslim scholars living in western nations to use scientific astronomical calculations to determine the beginning of the Islamic lunar months. The Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) has been in the forefront of this controversial movement to mobilise the Ummah to accept a predetermined Islamic calendar based on astronomical calculations.

Eventually after a special conference in the US on hilal sighting in June this year, where research papers dealing with the juridical and astronomical aspects of the topic were presented, the FCNA decided to use astronomical calculations as the basis for its determination of the new Islamic lunar months. It also decided to determine a pre-calculated global moon sighting Islamic calendar for the whole Muslim world by using the International Date Line or the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT 12:00) as the conventional point of reference.

Many Muslim communities in other western countries have also started using astronomical calculations instead of visual moon sighting to determine the beginning of the lunar months. In fact, based on astronomical calculations, Eid was celebrated on Oct 23 by Muslim communities in many countries in Europe and Canada. (Coincidentally though, these astronomical calculations have tallied with Saudi Arabia’s determination of the first of Shawwal 2006.)

But as evident by the Eid celebrations last week around the world, instead of moving more towards a single, unified Islamic calendar, the Muslim Ummah appear more divided than ever before on the method of determining the lunar months. This division was already evident within Pakistan even one week before Eid when the NWFP minister for religious affairs reportedly criticised the chairman of the Central Ruet-i-Hilal Committee for his “scientific approach” to moon sighting and advised him to strictly follow “Islamic principles”.

So long as some Muslims stick religiously to moon sighting in determining the beginning of lunar months while others prefer to switch over to astronomical calculations, the results are bound to be different in different countries as well as in different localities within the same country. The results have already long been different even among those who use the same method of visual moon sighting in different areas because of weather conditions and pollution.

But then one can argue, if the unity of the Ummah is not apparently being broken by praying at different times and not praying Jumaah all over the world at the same time, then why should the starting of a month at different times have anything to do with unity?

The real issue here seems to be tolerance, or rather intolerance of communities within the same Muslim faith for each other’s views on the method of determining the lunar months, or even each other’s views on the visibility of the new moon.

If such tolerance had prevailed, the incident in Khyber Agency where 14 people were reportedly killed in clashes over moon sighting between rival groups would probably not have taken place. If tolerance had prevailed, we Muslims would probably have developed a consensus by now on one common method of determining the Islamic lunar calendar, or we would have respected each other’s different methods of doing so.