PESHAWAR: A petition was filed with the Peshawar High Court on Thursday seeking orders for the government to disband the Central Ruet-i-Hilal Committee besides declaring its chairman not competent to regulate the Islamic calendar.

Petitioner Shahid Orakzai, a freelance journalist, claimed that Ruet-i-Hilal Committee chairman Mufti Muneebur Rehman had again triggered a religious controversy by delaying the fasting month of Ramazan for 24 hours.

He prayed the court to declare that Pakistani Muslims, who did follow the declaration of the committee’s chairman about Ramazan moon sighting, compensate for the lapse in accordance with the teachings of the Holy Quran.

Respondents in the petition are chairman of the Ruet-i-Hilal Committee and government of Pakistan through secretary of the religious affairs ministry.

The petitioner said for all practical purposes, the unaccounted 24 hours would remain part of the month of Ramazan.

“Those hours cannot be washed away by any means or switched to another month,” he said.

The petitioner said the high court should ask the committee’s chairman if he would be willing to correct and re-adjust the Hijri calendar on the basis of the full moon to occur later that month.

He said by the ‘Quranic mathematics and estimation’, the duration of every lunar month was to be determined by the number of days counted between two full moons.

The petitioner said the Ruet-i-Hilal Committee was unaware of that system laid down in the Holy Quran.

He claimed that until the ‘lost’ 24 hours were adjusted in the month of Ramazan, the committee’s chairman was likely to spoil Eidul Fitr for the entire Pakistani nation.

The petitioner said the ‘lost’ 24 hours were bound to delay the sighting of Shawal moon in Pakistan compared to other Muslim countries of Asia and Middle East.

He said the petition was filed primarily to avert any wrong pronouncement by the committee chairman about the Shawal moon and seek a declaration from the high court about the lapse regarding the Ramazan moon and obligatory recompense by Pakistani Muslims.

“As an interim relief, the court should restrain the Ruet-i-Hilal Committee’s chairman from making any public declaration about the moon of Shawal until the decision on this petition,” he said.

Published in Dawn, May 10th, 2019