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Sighting the new moon — entering your house by the back and not by the door

Friday Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz, for Lahore Ahmadiyya UK, 4 April 2025

“They ask you about the new moons. Say: They are times appointed for people, and (for) the pilgrimage. And it is not righteousness that you enter houses by their backs, but he is righteous who keeps his duty. And go into houses by their doors; and keep your duty to Allah, that you may be successful.” — ch. 2, Al-Baqarah, v. 189

یَسۡـَٔلُوۡنَکَ عَنِ الۡاَہِلَّۃِ ؕ قُلۡ ہِیَ مَوَاقِیۡتُ لِلنَّاسِ وَ الۡحَجِّ ؕ وَ لَیۡسَ الۡبِرُّ بِاَنۡ تَاۡتُوا الۡبُیُوۡتَ مِنۡ ظُہُوۡرِہَا وَ لٰکِنَّ الۡبِرَّ مَنِ اتَّقٰیۚ وَ اۡتُوا الۡبُیُوۡتَ مِنۡ اَبۡوَابِہَا ۪ وَ اتَّقُوا اللّٰہَ لَعَلَّکُمۡ تُفۡلِحُوۡنَ ﴿۱۸۹﴾

We are all so familiar with the suspense just before the end of Ramadan when Muslims wait for the announcements of the sighting of the new moon, the criterion by which Muslim organisations and countries decide the day of Eid-ul-Fitr. This verse of the Quran occurs immediately after the verses relating to fasting in Ramadan. And  both before the beginning of Ramadan and before its end, Muslims do indeed ask their religious leaders about the new moons, if they have been sighted. Here we are told that new moons are a way of determining time for people, and determining also the time of the Pilgrimage. According to the website of the Royal Museum Greenwich:

“The word ‘month’ takes its root from the Moon. A month was originally defined to be either 29 or 30 days, roughly equal to the 29.5-day cycle of the lunar phases. Some of our calendar months were later padded out with extra days so that 12 months would make up one complete 365-day solar year.”

I should add here that there are two cycles in action. One is the cycle of the moon around the earth, in 29 or 30 days, and the other is the cycle of the sun (caused by the earth going round the sun) over the 365-day year which brings us our seasons. Both these cycles have a great influence on the working of nature around us on earth and on our own human activities. That is why our time measurement is based on the move­ments that these two bodies appear to make in the sky.

This solar calendar could only be established because the governments of various European countries, or in those days, the kings, implemented it in law. So today is 4th April in terms of the law of all countries. If, for example, you have to make a payment by 4th April, then both you as the payer and your payee are sure which day that is. At the time of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, and in his land and society, it was very diffi­cult, if not impossible, to establish an official calendar centrally and make people follow it. The state organisation was not up to this task, information could not be communicated throughout the country about such a calendar, and the literacy rate was extremely low. As the Holy Prophet himself said:

“We are an illiterate people, who neither write nor keep account. A month is this and this.” By “this and this” he was indicating by hand that it is sometimes of twenty-nine days and sometimes of thirty days (Bukhari, hadith 1913).

He meant that the limit of their knowledge, obtained by looking out for the new moon, is that a month turns out to be either 29 or 30 days. In another hadith occurring near this one, and which is quoted often, the Holy Prophet said:

“When you see it (i.e., the new moon of Ramadan), start fasting, and when you see it (i.e., the new moon of the next month), break the fasting. And if it is cloudy, then cal­culate it” (hadith 1900).

In yet another hadith near these he says at the end:

“And if it is cloudy, then complete the period of thirty days” (hadith 1907).

Following this advice, people look out for the new moon’s appearance after 29 days have passed over the current month. If they see it, the month ends at 29 days. If they don’t see it, despite clear conditions, the month continues to the 30th day. There is a third case, that due to it being cloudy people are unable to find out whether the crescent has appeared or not. In this case they are given two options: make use of calculation or complete the period of thirty days. A Muslim scholar from the very early times of Islam has said that the advice “calculate it” is for “those who have been specially blessed with this knowledge (of the stages of the moon) by Allah”, and the alternative of “complete the period of thirty days” is for ordinary people. On this basis, if experts in calculating stages of moon are available they should fix the dates of Ramadan and Eid by calculation and the public should follow those dates. But in those places where there are no such experts or knowledge available, people should act on the instruction to “complete the period of thirty days”.

As regards the first hadith which I quoted, “We are an illiterate people, who neither write nor keep account”, even many centuries ago an interpreter of Bukhari wrote:

“What is meant are those Muslims who were present with the Holy Prophet when he said this, or it applies to the general public, or it may refer to his own self.”

Maulana Muhammad Ali, in his Urdu translation of Bukhari which was published about a hundred years ago, writes about this hadith:

“In my opinion it meant only the Arabs of that time. It does not mean that Muslims will never be able to write or keep account. In our day and age, when the knowledge of the stages of the moon is widely available, I see no reason why calcu­la­tion should not be used to fix one date in every country, so that all Muslims there should start fasting on the same day and celebrate Eid on the same day. It does happen that in many places, due to cloud or dust in the air, the observa­tion of the new moon by eye is not possible. The sending of telegraphic messages at the last moment also does not serve this purpose. The result is that in neighbouring villages Eid is on two different days, and the same disruption is found even in cities. If the date is fixed in advance by computation and announced, this would be in accord­ance with the instruc­tion of the Holy Prophet to “calculate it”.”

Maulana Muhammad Ali also writes:

“For an illiterate people not familiar with doing calculations, he (i.e., the Holy Prophet) has taught a simple method: if the new moon is seen on the evening of the 29th, the month will be of 29 days, otherwise it will be of 30 days. If it cannot be deter­mined whether the new moon has appeared or not, the month should be taken as of 30 days. But the Holy Prophet’s statement does not mean that keeping records or making calculations is against Islam.”

Before there existed any means of instant remote communications, let us say about two hundred years ago, the start and end of Ramadan in any town or village in the Muslim world was determined locally by sighting the lunar crescent. In no place could there be two different dates because people in any place only had local information. People located some distance away from Makkah could not know whether the moon had been sighted in Makkah or not. The start of instant remote communication was with the telegraph, less than 200 years ago. That is when problems began. People who did not sight the moon in their location might receive a telegram from a place hundreds of miles away that the moon has been sighted. Both places are correct in their observation. So Muslims in the first location would become divided into two groups, one following the local observation and the other accepting the telegraphic news.

As far back as 1931, we find a Friday Khutba near the end of Ramadan by Maulana Muhammad Ali with the heading: “It is not necessary to sight the moon to hold Eid, calculations of the phases of the moon can be used to determine Eid.” He said in that khutba:

“It is a matter of regret that, due to lack of knowledge among Muslims, every year at this time differences and disputes arise. Some wait for news from other places by tele­gram, sometimes it is declared at midnight that tomorrow is Eid, and sometimes after people have started the fast they are told to break the fast during daytime because it is the day of Eid. A scene of chaos erupts at Eid.”

In the verse I quoted above, it says after mentioning the new moons:

“And it is not righteousness that you enter houses by their backs, but he is righteous who keeps his duty. And go into houses by their doors.”

An explanation of this statement is given that there was a superstitious custom among pre-Islamic Arabs that if one of them went out of his house for some important purpose and failed to achieve it, then when he returned home he would not enter it through the door, but by going around the back, jumping over the back wall or through a window at the back. There were other occasions as well when a person would not enter his house by its door. The Quran condemns this superstition. Commentators of the Quran also say that it has a more general meaning than being only about this superstition. Entering your house stands for how you undertake some task or duty, especially a religious duty which you undertake to attain righteousness. This verse teaches that whatever aim you are trying to achieve, you should use the proper and direct way that is provided for achieving it, and not try to go around the proper way.

This instruction occurs in connection with the mention of new moons in this verse. In the light of events which occur in our modern age, related to new moons, we may give this another interpretation to entering by the back and not by the door. It is now a proven fact that the Saudi Arabian authorities determine and set the dates of starting Ramadan and of Eid-ul-Fitr by means of astronomical data long in advance of the day before. However, they do not wish to publicise this because they would face objections from the large sections of Muslims who believe that these dates can only be set by sighting the new moon with the human eye. What they do is that on the evening of their already-fixed date, they issue an announcement that the moon has been sighted, even though on many such occasions it is impossible that it could have been sighted.

This happened again at the end of March this year. Astronomers, both non-Muslim and Muslim, have openly declared that it was impossible to sight the moon on 29th March, when the Saudi Arabian authorities announced the sighting the new moon. Entering your house by the door, rather than the back, means that they should say, openly and plainly and in full public view, that they pre-calculate these dates, and that it is perfectly allowed in Islam to do so. Then they can announce these dates more than a year before, rather than waiting till the evening before. It would be greatly convenient for all Muslims, apart from the fact that the Saudis would then be open and truthful with people, rather than resorting to unjustified announcements.

Lastly, as you will all know, on Eid day in UK the BBC did a live broadcast of the prayers and the khutba from the main mosque in Bradford. Naturally people will think that this is the first time that the Eid function has been visually presented to the general British public. However, just over a hundred year ago, there was no television and visual news were presented in cinemas in the form of brief clips which had been filmed on location by newsreel companies and made into a compilation. The Eid functions at the Woking Mosque used to be broadcast in these newsreel compilations. The earliest such clips of Eid functions date back to 1916 and continued till the late 1950s. In those days that was the most modern and latest technology for showing events to the public, just as a live broadcast is today the most modern method.

May Allah enable us to use the benefits of modern knowledge and technology to organise our religious affairs also, and not only our worldly affairs — Ameen.

Website: www.aaiil.uk