Moon Unity: The Ramadan Lunar Calendar

Ramadan is an ancient ritual, but figuring out the official start of Ramadan in 21st-century America has become a tricky, modern business. Since Ramadan can't begin until the first visible wisp of the new moon, should Muslims mark their calendars by its first sanctioned sighting anywhere in the Islamic world or only once the nascent crescent has been spotted in North American skies?

In the past few decades, as the immigrant Muslim population has grown, it has not been uncommon for people in the same region, or even in the same masjid, to observe Ramadan and the break-the-fast Eid on two separate timelines. But an effort in recent years to follow a unified calendar has been gaining ground. Leading the charge: a network of Islamic clerics, scientists, amateur astronomers, and cyber-faithful.

"Unity is important not only [as a] symbolic aspect, but also a religious matter," says Khalid Shaukat, a research scientist and web master of www.moonsighting.com.

"It can be achieved by educating the masses of Muslims about the science of moon sighting so that they may not remain divided."

That's not as simple as it sounds.

Since the seventh century, Muslims have based their calendar on the lunar cycle, counting 29 or 30 days in each month of their 354-day year. But while technology has made it a fairly easy task to predict what many call the "new" crescent's place in the sky each month, guaranteeing visibility can be a vexing matter. Cloud cover or fog can prevent moon sightings. Airplanes, satellites, and other traffic in increasingly congested skies can also complicate things, according to Shaukat.

Even for communities that have decided to go with a local crescent view, all it takes is one "Ramadan Mubarak" ("Blessed Ramadan") phone call from relatives back home--where the holy month is under way--to derail attempts at local unity, says Metwalli Amer, the Egyptian-born imam of the Sacramento Area League of Associated Muslims, a Northern California mosque.

"Then the damage is done," says Amer, who has been trying since the mid-1980s to get Sacramento Muslims to observe the fast and subsequent feast together.

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