The Islamic Calendar in the UK: A Light Through the Clouds?

A simplified explanation why we cannot agree on Ramadan or Eid dates within the UK, and a possible solution

By Imad Ahmed

Introduction

With Ramadan just over a month away, we of course will be faced with the same annual confusion: when do we fast? When shall we celebrate Eid? And why is it that we have this fight every year?

This article hopes to be a short guide and restatement of the basic problem of the Islamic Calendar in the UK, and solutions.

As this is a ‘simplified’ guide, we will not be discussing Saudi Arabia’s problematic moonsighting practices, but focus on issues within the UK and how we can solve this problem within the UK.

If you want to know more about these problems in Saudi Arabia, please consult our following two videos, which outline them in detail:

• Moon Wars: Explains Saudi inaccurate sighting report for Eid al Adha 1439
• Ramadan Roulette: Explains problems in Saudi's calculated calendar system

This blog will cover:

• The Problem
• Background to the Problem
• Outsourcing the Moon Abroad
• What about Local Sighters?
• A Possible Solution
• Next steps

The Problem

We do not have a unified UK based Islamic Calendar.

The issue is felt the strongest during Eid and Ramadan, where the community (and in some cases, families) are divided about when to fast, and when they should celebrate the two Eid dates.

Background to the Problem

Muslims from around the world have historically been able to conduct the Islamic Calendar through monthly moonsightings without any issue – as was the practice of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.

However, when Muslims first came to the UK and settled, they faced a very British problem: the weather!

There were early attempts to conduct an Islamic Calendar in the UK through sunnah moonsighting. Yet, due to clouds and the fact that most Muslims lived in polluted UK cities, they were unable to see the moon month on month.

This meant that they could not conduct the traditional, lunar visibility based calendar.

Understandably, they resorted to other solutions – the most common solution being to follow word from abroad.

The classic UK astronomy problem - cloudy weather! Pic from a moonsighting attempt in Barr Beacon, Birmingham. The moon was not seen here - but it was seen in other locations in the UK on the same day.

Outsourcing the Moon Abroad

As it stands, all mosques in the UK rely on another country for their calendar.

The main countries currently being followed are: Saudi Arabia, Morocco, South Africa, Iran, Turkey and some others.

However, as these countries are located on different parts of the globe, they may end up seeing the new crescent moon on different nights, and thus start their month on different nights.

For example, Morocco and South Africa are thousands of miles apart, and both have great moonsighting practices. It is entirely scientifically possible that one country may see the moon on one night, and the other country may first see the moon on the following night. As a result, these two countries could start any given month one day apart from one another. Mosques in the UK following these two countries will also start their months respectively one day apart from one another, depending on which country they are outsourcing to.

To complicate matters further, some countries don’t even attempt to sight the moon and use a different method to determine their calendar. For example, Turkey uses a calculated calendar all year round, and Saudi Arabia uses a calculated calendar for 8 months of the year. Unfortunately, the calculated calendars used by both Turkey and Saudi Arabia don’t actually match the visibility of the moon, and dates tend to be fixed earlier than the visible new crescent!

This is one of the reasons why you will tend to find that Turkish-following mosques and Saudi-following mosques start their Islamic months a day earlier than other mosques in the UK.

Thus, as long as Muslims living in the UK rely on multiple other countries for their Islamic Calendar, with each country having different calendar dates, there will never be a unified Islamic Calendar in the UK.

To put it another way: if in a single UK town you have one mosque which relies on Saudi Arabia and another mosque which relies on Morocco, you will inevitably find that most years you will not celebrate Eid on the same day. 

Another analogy might be: if one UK mosque follows the maghrib (sunset) prayer time for Saudi Arabia and another follows the maghrib prayer time for Morocco – then they will not pray maghrib at the same time. The Moroccan time will be more accurate than the Saudi time for those of us living in the UK, but neither will perfectly match the UK sunset.

The solution would be to follow the maghrib (sunset) time of your locality. Similarly, a solution to the UK Islamic Calendar could be to follow the UK moon and not to rely on word from abroad – which is what the New Crescent Society advocate.

What About Local Sighters in the UK?

We do have a very large group of mosques in the UK (some estimations say the majority outside of London) who attempt to follow local sightings, as they believe it is closer to the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. Their efforts have also been increasing over the recent years.

Nevertheless, these mosques still rely on word from abroad. Why?

In the past, there were not that many actual moonsighters in the UK. They tried (and continue to try) to see the moon every month. When they saw the moon in the UK, they would follow it. Yet there were situations where local sighters did not see the moon for many consecutive months in the UK, and so were unable to conduct an Islamic Calendar based on the local moon all year round. They decided (and sought a fatwa to this effect) to rely on word from the closest Muslim country, Morocco, when they were unable to see the moon in the UK. These local sighters (and their fatwa) stated that it would be best if they could follow their own local moon as far as possible, but due to hardship in moonsighting in the UK, they could look to Morocco.

Around 9 months of the year, Morocco and UK will be able to see the moon on the same day, and so on most occasions, the Eid moon is seen on the same date in Morocco and the UK - so it seemed like a sensible compromise for local sighters.

However, around four months of the year, Morocco will be able to see the moon when it will not be possible to see the moon in the UK. On such occasions, the local sighters will still defer to Morocco’s moonsighters, even though they did not see the moon in the UK.

For example, in Eid al Fitr 2018 (1439 AH), it was not possible to see the moon for Eid in the UK, though it was possible to see the moon in Morocco. Indeed no one in the UK saw the moon that Eid. Nevertheless, Morocco’s moonsighting was still used, and Eid was celebrated in the UK, despite the moon not being seen anywhere on the British Isles.

On that occasion, if a purely UK lunar visibility based calendar was being used, the Muslims in the UK would not have followed Morocco, and would have celebrated Eid on the following day in accordance with our own local moon.

As such, whilst we do have some local sighting in the UK, it would be more accurate to say that the calendar of the 'local sighters' is still being outsourced to Morocco. For those who wish to adhere to a notion of following a local moon, following Morocco is not perfect, but perhaps (?) a practical solution until we have enough local moonsighters to be able to see the moon month on month, and until we come together and agree on a UK lunar visibility based calendar - to which we now turn our attention to.

A Possible Solution?

Note

Any proposed solution will need a community consensus and buy-in. New Crescent Society have been speaking to Muslim communities up and down the country, and we are tentatively suggesting the following as a proposal.

We recognise that everyone may not agree to this, and details may need to be ironed out – and we welcome those further discussions. Please do leave your thoughts.

Proposal

Muslims in the UK to have a UK Islamic Calendar based on lunar visibility in the UK - just as other countries have their own local calendars (e.g: Morocco, South Africa, Bangladesh, Oman and so on).

Is this possible?

Yes. In the past it was believed that the UK was too cloudy to have its own calendar, though we now have ample evidence to suggest otherwise.

For this solution to be viable, there needs to be the following three things:

1. Enough moonsighting groups nationally, who are trained and attempt to sight every month.
2. A mechanism to collect sighting reports, verify reports, and announce the sightings
3. Community buy-in

With your support, we have made progress on all three fronts, but we have some way to go yet!

Let’s look at each in turn:

1. Enough moonsighting groups nationally, who are trained and attempt to sight every month.

We need enough sighting locations to ensure that weather is not a problem in the UK, and for groups to be able to corroborate sightings and data. The monthly sightings are also a fun day out for a picnic and a great opportunity for kids to learn practical astronomy!

The Northala Fields moonsighting gang - West London

Yes, sometimes it is cloudy, but it's not cloudy everywhere in the UK at the same time. We have found that when the moon is not visible in one part of the country, it is normally visible in other parts of the country!

To illustrate: in Ramadan 1440 (2019), the moon was not seen in the South of England, but was seen by hundreds of people in the North. For Eid al Fitr at the end of the month, this time it was rainy in the North of England, but thousands of people in the South of England saw the moon! (It was also livestreamed from Greenwich, which you can see here).

The moon was seen in London (zoom above 'walkie-talkie building), but not in the North for Eid al Fitr 1440 /2019. When we work together, we can have a calendar in the UK!

Over the past year, we've worked with lots of groups around the country and have really demonstrated that the new crescent is possible to sight in the UK, and we can have our own calendar! Just look at our data - in the last twelve months, there was only a single month (Jumada al Ula, December 2019) where the weather prevented us from seeing the moon. We saw the moon the other eleven months, on the first night the moon was scientifically possible to see in the UK after which the new month starts. This represents something of a record for the UK, Alhamdulillah! On the single month we didn't see the moon, according to weather reports there were places in the UK where it was not cloudy, but we had no sighters there…otherwise it would have been 12 out of 12!

We have shattered the myth that the moon is not visible in the UK, with groups being trained up and down the country. We have year-round sighting locations in: Cornwall, Southampton, Norfolk, Peterborough, London, High Wycombe, Oxford, Birmingham, York, Bolton, Blackburn, Preston, and Dewsbury.

UK Regions map:

We still need more locations all across the UK

But there is still a lot more to do! We need more of the UK regions covered, especially the South West, South East, Wales, the North West North East, and Scotland. 

In Morocco, for example, they have almost 300 sighting locations across the country. We've got 4 million Muslims living in the UK - why can't we have the same?

2. A mechanism to collect sighting reports, verify reports, and announce the sighting

Now that so much progress has been made in people sighting the moon in the UK, creating a reporting mechanism is now the priority for New Crescent Society in 2020. We are speaking with our partners at Greenwich to see how we can collaborate and create a transparent, easy to use platform.

Until then, please keep sending us your pictures, which we will showcase on social media!

3. Community buy-in

Again, through your support and increased activity, there is huge grassroots support for a UK based Islamic Calendar. Now that we have Muslims living in all regions in the UK, there is a genuine momentum and sense of possibility about creating one.

New Crescent Society has also reached out to Imams, community leaders and mosque committees of all Muslim denominations to discuss this issue with them, and to bring them together on a shared solution. To this end, we held the inaugural National Hilal Conference, where this issue was discussed by over 100 mosque leaders - you can read our report here.

National Hilal Conference at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich

One of the outcomes of this conference was a sense that if we were able to get enough sighters nationally, and a robust reporting mechanism, then we believe that most, if not all, mosques would be on board with this solution.

At this stage, we have not spoken to every single community group in the UK, but we are continuing to reach out. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you would like us to reach out to your community!

Next Steps

New Crescent Society's next steps will be to:

• Continue to hold educational programmes at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. We have a different show every month - do come along!
• Continue to support groups in sighting the moon every month. If you would like to receive training in your locality, especially if it is in a region where there is no moonsighting, contact us!;
• Prioritise creating a reporting mechanism / platform this year.

What about you? What are your next steps?

We suggest

• Find a local sighting group and join them!
• If there isn't a local sighting group near you - contact us! We'll help you set one up
• Speak to your local mosque and ask them about their way forward
• Join our team! We're looking to expand our team - if you have any particular skills you can volunteer, let us know (web design, social media content and optimisation, app development, training and developing others, astronomy knowledge, local liaison leads for communities)
• Join our Facebook and Instagram page to follow our activities!

Hopefully this blog gives you some sense of the problem in the UK, where we are now, and possible solutions for the future.

If you have any comments or questions, leave them below. We'd love to hear from you!
You can contact us directly on info@newcrescentsociety.com