Moon sighting is Sunnah – not moon fighting

Auto-generated transcript: In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the honour of the prophets and messengers. Muhammad, the Messenger of Allahﷺ, and upon his family and companions. Tashleem and kaseer and kaseera from my father. My brothers and sisters, we are at the beginning of Ramadan. And as usual, of course, we cannot possibly have Ramadan unless we have an argument. May Allah have mercy on us. Because moon sighting is Sunnah, not moon fighting. So once again, I am compelled by my friends to repeat what I have said every single year. That the sighting of the moon, and please understand very clearly, I am trying to be as clear and as simple as possible. The first and foremost thing to understand is this. The sighting of the moon is an act of worship. It is an act where if we do this for the rida of Allahﷻ, and with the intention, especially in the month of Ramadan, in the intention of fasting, then inshallah we ask Allahﷻ to reward us for making the effort to try to sight the moon. When you accept that the sighting of the moon is an act of worship, we have to understand that the basic fundamental principle with regard to every act of worship is that an act of worship is an act of worship. And that is an act of worship only and only if it was done by Rasulullahﷺ, or he commanded that it should be done. Otherwise, it cannot be an act of worship. For example, the adhan is an act of worship. Now, to the best of my knowledge, of course Rasulullahﷺ may have recited the adhan. We know in the case of Abu Mahdura, he taught him the adhan during the battle of Hunayn. But he did not go and call out the adhan as a normal thing. It was in the mosque or in the mosques or because it was commanded by the Rabbi alayhi salatu wasalam. The reason I'm mentioning this is because this is what relates to this issue of moon sighting. Now, let me first begin with the hadith concerning this. The hadith in Sayyid Bukhari, narrated by Abdullah ibn Umar radiallahu anhum, who said that Rasulullahﷺ mentioned Ramadan. And he said: "Do not fast until you see the crescent of Ramadan." Very important. And do not give up fasting. Do not leave fasting. Until you see. In the Arabic, it says, until you see it. Meaning, until you see the crescent of Shawwal. And then, very, very important. And this is where we insist on confusing ourselves. Rasulullahﷺ said, "But if the sky is overcast for you, He did not say the sky is overcast in the whole universe, or the whole world. No. For you. Alaykum. We say, salamu alaykum. I'm talking to the people who don't know Arabic. Salamu alaykum. Means what? Salam for the whole world? No. Salam to you. Peace be upon you. Fa'in ghum alaykum. If the sky is overcast for you, then count the days. Count the days meaning? Complete 30 days. Number one therefore, is this is the hukum of the Nabi alayhi salatu was salam. This is the Sayyid hadith, and it is in Bukhari. It is narrated by one of the most important of the Sahaba of Nabiﷺ, Abdullah ibn Umar, radhi allahu anhu. And therefore, to obey this hadith, to obey this command of Rasulullahﷺ is wajib and fard on anyone who calls himself a Muslim. Simple as that. Number two. The whole argument of saying, no, but the moon was born. The moon was there. It's only that we could not see it. Yes. Ghum alaykum means that the Rasul alayhi salatu was salam also knows that the moon was born, must have been there. Otherwise, where is the question of saying, if the sky is cloudy and you can't see it, where is the question of saying you can't see? When it would not have been visible anyway. When you say you can't see it, it means that the moon otherwise would have been visible. Had the sky been clear, you would have been able to see it. But in your case, the sky is not clear. Therefore, what must you do? You must not stop fasting and you must not start fasting. You must not say, well, you see, it is already born, so it is there. Therefore, it doesn't matter. The sky is cloudy. It matters that the sky is cloudy because the Rasulﷺ said it matters that the sky is cloudy. The simplest thing to understand in all of this is what is our akhira about Rasul allahﷺ. To obey the Rasulﷺ is wajib and fard on us. To refuse to obey him is haram and it is kufr. Now, another hadith in Sahih Muslim narrated by Abu Huraira radhi allahu anhu. He reported that Rasulﷺ said: "Start fasting on sighting it, that is the new moon, and break your fast on sighting it, that is the new moon. But if the sky is cloudy for you, then complete the number, which means of 30." And Abu Huraira radhi allahu anhu, Anna al-Nabiﷺ qala, Suumu li ru'yatihi wa aftiru li ru'yatihi fa in ghummi alaykum fa akmilu adada. Again, the command, again the tone of command, Suumu, fast. In the other case, he said, do not fast until you see it. Here he is saying, fast when you see it, which is the same thing being said in a different way. He said, fast when you see it and stop fasting when you see it, which means that if you don't see it, don't start fasting and don't stop fasting. But if the sky is cloudy for you, fa in ghummi alaykum, for you, fa akmilu adada, complete the count. In a hadith in Tirmidhi and Nasai, Ammar ibn Yasir said: "Whoever fasts the day concerning in which there is doubt, has disobeyed Abu al-Ghasib, that is the sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, that is the kunya of Rasulullahﷺ. He said, whoever fasts on a day concerning which there is doubt, has disobeyed Rasulullahﷺ." Final point, when people say that the moon was seen in this place and that place and we are following this place and that place, Quraib Radhiyallahu reported, I came to Syria and I finished my work. I was doing some work there. I tended to my needs. The crescent of Ramadan appeared over me while I was in Syria and I saw it on Friday. He's not saying I heard about it. I saw it on Friday. Then I came to Medina at the end of the month. Abdullah Ibn Abbas Radhiyallahu Anhu asked me about it and I mentioned the crescent. Ibn Abbas Radhiyallahu Anhu asked him, when did you see it? I said, we saw it on Friday night. Ibn Abbas Radhiyallahu Anhu again confirmed. He said, you saw it? He said, yes, I saw it and the people saw it and they fasted as did Muawiyah bin Abi Sufyan Radhiyallahu Anhu. Ibn Abbas Radhiyallahu Anhu said, but we saw it on Friday night. He said, but we saw it on Saturday night. Now this is between Syria and Medina. He said, but we saw it on Saturday night. So we will continue fasting until we complete 30 days or we see it meaning on the 29th day. So Qurayb says Radhiyallahu Anhu, I asked him, is it not enough for you that Muawiyah saw it and fasted? Ibn Abbas said, no. Such was the command of the messenger of Allahﷺ. Now, final question. People say, oh, you see, but you know, those were old days, these are new days and here we have this and that and the other and we are so advanced and therefore, we will calculate. Please understand, the people who say this, they are showing us their ignorance of history. Calculations for the moon are not the same as the calculations for the moon. They are nothing new. Because the moon and stars were used and the sun also was used for navigation. And therefore, calculations have been in existence from literally from the beginning of time practically. The Hindu calendar is probably more than 3,000 years old or 4,000 years old. Right? Around the same vintage or even more was the calendar of the ancient Persians. And before that, few thousand years before that was the calendar of the Egyptians. So moon sighting by, not moon sighting, moon calculation was very much known and used and they used it for, in some cases for navigation, in some cases for, various, you know, religious things. It was very well known in the time of Rasulullahﷺ. So when Rasulullahﷺ said, see the moon, he didn't say see the moon because we have no other way of finding out. No. He knew we have other ways of finding out by calculations. We can know when the moon is supposed to be born, whether we see it or not doesn't matter. He could have said, use calculations and just do it. He did not say that. He said, see the moon. Which means that seeing the moon itself has significance, has religious significance. And therefore, we follow the hukum of the Nabiﷺ. Final point I want to share with you. In America once, at an interfaith gathering, you were talking about Ramadan and one of the rabbis there, one of the Jewish rabbis, he said to me something very, and he said to me in a very sad way. He said: "You people have still kept the tradition alive of having a religion which is connected with the universe." He said, we had that. He said, we did exactly this. We used to start the month and end the month by looking at and seeing the moon because they also have a lunar calendar. He said, but our people, they wanted to, they said this is inconvenient and we can't fix dates and we can't do this and can't do that. And so, we got rid of it. And we now use calculations. He said, it is so sad because we lost our connection with the universe. Now, he's talking about it from a different angle, but I'm saying, here is somebody who is not even Muslim who appreciates the fact that we follow the divine system. And we have the divine system and all we can do is to fight. May Allah have mercy on us. My brothers and sisters, I, I ask you, please, do not fall into this trap of fasting. Sighting is Sunnah. Fighting is not Sunnah. We ask Allah SWT to help us to, to, to meet Ramadan in a state where we are, our hearts are at peace and we are at peace and harmony with each other. And we ask Allah SWT to accept our fasting and to accept our, all our ibadat and to, and to give us, make it easy, for us, and to give us Ramadan in the best way. And we ask Allah SWT to help us to please Him in whatever we do.