Each year the Muslim Ummah finds itself in a fix over the beginning of the month of Ramadhan and its ending to announce the celebration of Eid. Celebration of Eid on two and sometimes on three different days in Pakistan is not uncommon. Following the Gregorian Calendar since centuries, the Muslims have forgotten their own divine prescriptions on the subject resulting in chaos and confusion and generally in shear embarrassment over the division in observance of the fasting month and the celebration of Eid. No one has strived to take cognizance of this wide split over the lunation or moon phases within a nation and within a region and to exert in the path of finding a viable and logical solution to the problem within the bounds of Islamic Shariah.
Instead reliance is placed on the traditional way of sighting the moon, duly authenticated by the Ruet-i-Hilal Committee, a practice that has over the years been proved to be misleading and cumbersome resulting in missing a fast on the due day and observance of fast on genuine Eid Day. The predicament calls for serious thought and action not only by the religious scholars but all Muslim brothers and sisters as it affects the religio-social life of each one of them. Fasting was mandated upon the Muslims during the month of Ramadhan through an express commandment of Almighty Allah enshrined in Sura Albaqra. Hence it is laid down in 2:185 as, “ Ramadhan is the (month) in which was sent down the Qur’an, as a guide to mankind, also clear (signs) for guidance and judgment.
So every one of you who witnesses (finds or is present in) this month should spend it in fasting or should fast in it....” No clear-cut directions are available in the holy Qur’an as how to find this month and start fasting. Three verses down in the said Sura, reference is available leading us to follow some course of action for finding this month. As such it is so ordained in 2:189 “ They ask thee (O Muhammad) concerning the New Moons. Say: They are but signs to mark fixed period of time in (affairs of) men and for pilgrimage. It is no virtue if ye enter your houses from the back....”
So all superstitions surrounding new moon were dashed once and for all and the purpose of the appearance of new moon was related to the fixation of time for different occasions like Hajj. The new moon and subsequently its lunation were thus declared as simply a sign to calibrate our time with no other virtue attached to it. No condition was imposed in this verse whether to fix our timings or establish our calendar by virtually sighting the new moon or use our knowledge of its movement to calculate its various phases.
In the early days of the Prophethood, there was no concept of a pure lunar calendar or pure lunar year. The Arabs were following lunisolar year that was partially lunar as the beginning of a month was subject to the new moon but was at the same time synchronized to the seasons by the addition of an intercalary month or nasi as mentioned in the Qur’an.
It was in fact a Hebrew Calendar that was though originally purely lunar but affected and altered due to the influence of Babylonian Calendar during the sixth century BC incarceration of the Jews by the Babylonians. The names of the months also bore the Babylonian effect. The Jews would thus add a leap month between the last month of Hajj and first month of Muharram at certain intervals to keep the year attuned to the seasons. The names of the month were Arabic translated from Hebrew. The month of Ramadhan borrowed its name from the Arabic word Ramada meaning “too hot” as this month, according to the then prevailing Arabic Calendar, always fell in hot summer.
It was like June of the solar year. When we look at the different calendars, we find that they were all lunars in essence but altered to take into consideration the weather effects. Chinese, Hindu, Hebrew, Bhuddist and many other calendars were lunar and later on changed into lunisolar by intercalation. Even the old Roman Calendar was also pure lunar but changed into solar form by Julius Caesar circa 45-46 BC due to some problems in his pontification. That solar calendar called Julian Calendar was later on amended by Pope Gregory XVI in 1582 as different Christian denominations were celebrating Easter on different days. Eleven days were thus suppressed in the new calendar, called Gregorian Calendar, from the old Julian Calendar.
Almighty Allah in His mercy wanted to maintain sanctity of the four sacred months and also wanted the Believers to go along with the nature as they are part of the nature and their religion or din was also created on the same nature (Al-Qur’an, 30:30). He thus enjoined the Muslims to follow pure lunar months and years and forbade the practice of intercalation in the 9th year of the Hijra. Thus came the commandment in verses 36 and 37 of Sura Al-Tuba, “ The number of months in the sight of Allah is twelve so ordained by Him the day He created the heavens and the earth; of them four are sacred: That is the right religion so wrong not yourselves therein, and fight the Pagans all together as they fight you all together. But know that Allah is with those who restrain themselves. Verily the transposing (of a prohibited month) is an addition to Unbelief: The unbelievers are led to wrong thereby; for they make it lawful one year and forbidden another year in order to agree with the number on months forbidden by Allah and make such forbidden ones lawful. The evil of their course seems pleasing to them. But Allah guideth not those who reject faith.”
The observance of pure lunar year was thus prescribed for Believers enabling them to fulfill their canonical obligations irrespective of seasons in a year. As such we witness Ramadhan in different seasons over the years. Such were the circumstances the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) found himself. On one hand the Muslims were ordained to discard the then prevailing lunisolar calendar of Babylonian/Hebrew origin and as such they could no more observe the beginning and ending of their fasts according to the month of Ramadhan available in that calendar. With the grace and blessings of Allah and due to the prayers of Prophet (PBUH), the objective conditions have changed and the contents of the first Hadith regarding literary levels no more apply to the contemporary Ummah of our beloved Messenger of Allah (PBUH).
Theological scholars with vision to grasp the essence of the Prophet ‘s message and men of wisdom with knowledge of the movements of the celestial bodies form part of the Ummah and can meet the challenge by a synergy of their efforts to adequately monitor, calculate and record the birth of the new moon and its lunation. It shall be, indeed, offering a great tribute to the Prophet (PBUH) by the Ummah if it fulfills his desire expressed in the first Hadith referred to hereinabove and take measures to replace the practice of visual moon sighting by astronomical observations and exact calculations to start and end the month of Ramadhan. It can do so by utilizing the tools of modern technology and knowledge in the relevant field that are available to it.
There are about 756 verses in the holy Qur’an wherein Allah Almighty refers to His great Nature and its processes. Through several verses He invites the attention of mankind to ponder over His Nature that He calls His Signs. He explains the quintessence of His Signs in details for those with knowledge, for those with wisdom, for those with foresight, for those with intellect, for those who believe, for those who think and apply mind and so on. There is a constant exhortation of the Believers in the holy Qur’an to receive wisdom, enlightenment and leads from its contents, as it is a source of true knowledge and enlightenment, and use such resources to gain access to the ultimate truth of universe around them. It is no exception that Almighty Allah diverts Believer’s attention to the movement and essentialities of celestial bodies like in the verse translated hereinunder;
“It is He who made the sun to be a shining glory and the moon to be a light, and measured out stages or stations for it (moon) that ye might know the number of years and the count (of time). Nowise did Allah create this but in truth and righteousness. (Thus) doth He explain His Signs in detail for those with knowledge.” ....(Verse 5, Sura Yunis). In this verse Almighty Allah explains one of His Signs called moon and its various stations that enable us to establish years, months, days and time. It is addressed to those who possess knowledge or who strive to gain knowledge of the celestial bodies, as only they can comprehend the complex mechanism of such arrangement. Such knowledgeable persons will be those with knowledge about astronomy and not philosophy or other discipline. The reference here is to scholars or scientists who can calculate or find from such knowledge the start of a month, year and a day. There is no mention here of people with hawk’s eyes who can visually sight a moon to confirm the start of a month. Pondering deeply over the contents of the verse, one can vouch to opine that it is preferable to use informed knowledge to monitor the advent and departure of the month of Ramadhan than to herald it by traditional cumbersome and fault-prone visual sighting.

Nuclear power is not solution for energy crisis
Geoffrey Lean

At first sight, the case for building new nuclear power stations in Britain is overwhelming. Tony Blair buys it and, not long ago, so did I. The argument is simple. Nuclear, it starts, is our only large-scale source of electricity that does not burn fossil fuels which emit carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming. At present it provides more than a fifth of our power. The evidence that climate change will cause immense damage grows stronger, the need to combat it more urgent. But Britain’s aging reactors are being shut down. By 2020 only one will be left, and the atom’s share of our electricity will have shrunk from about 20 to 4 percent. To have any hope of tackling global warming we will have to replace them. The logic seems unassailable and — fanned by a nuclear industry PR campaign — it has swept through much of the Cabinet and the commentariat.
But as it has grown fashionable, I have become skeptic. The more I have looked into it, the more I have come to believe that building new reactors will not only fail to reduce global warming, but actually make it worse. For me this outweighs the traditional objections to atomic power, though as a longtime critic of the industry’s performance — albeit one believing that the nuclear option should be kept open — I accept they have force. Solving the problem of what to do with nuclear waste — which will remain dangerous for 240,000 years, 20 times longer than the entire history of civilization — is a moral imperative. It cannot be left for our descendants to sort out.
A serious accident could be far worse than the Chernobyl catastrophe, which happened in benign weather that prevented most of the radioactivity from falling out nearby. New reactors are designed to be much safer, but cannot provide complete protection against human error, the cause of almost every accident, or near miss, so far. And a terrorist attack on a nuclear power station, waste store or shipment grows ever more likely: Only this month a planned attack on an Australian reactor was uncovered. Nevertheless, the dangers of global warming are now so enormous that I would accept these hazards if, as proponents claim, expanding nuclear power would avert, or even significantly reduce, climate change.
In fact, it was none of these objections — but simple economics — that caused nuclear construction to decline after peaking 30 years ago. As even No 10 admits, not a single reactor has been built in a liberalized market anywhere in the world. Cost still remains the greatest obstacle. Blair’s own Performance and Innovation Unit concluded that nuclear power was about twice as expensive as generating electricity from gas or wind. Investors still spurn it. Even the nuclear industry does not want to build reactors without government assistance. Chancellor Gordon Brown is deeply reluctant to provide this, even though he is increasingly concerned about global warming, recently seeing off an attempt from the prime minister’s aides to abandon the government’s commitment to cut emissions of carbon dioxide by 20 percent by 2010.
Yet, again, if more nuclear was the best way to combat global warming — or even an important contribution — narrow economics should not be allowed to get in the way. But this is far from so. For a start, atomic power is not, as is claimed, “carbon free.” It may not emit carbon dioxide from its power stations, but huge amounts are produced from the energy burned in processing the uranium that fuels them. In all, it is estimated, it now generates a third as much as gas-fired electricity. And this will rise as poorer uranium ores are used. Next, nuclear cannot do much. It is used only in electricity generation, which presently emits only about a quarter of Britain’s carbon dioxide. And it will produce only a relatively small amount of the country’s power. So even building 10 new reactors, as the industry wants, will tackle only about 8 percent of the problem. And it cannot do even that in time. The industry itself admits that it will take 10 years to get the first new reactor on stream. More skeptic experts put the time at around the 15 years it took to build Britain’s last one, at Sizewell.
Yet witness after distinguished witness to an inquiry by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee has testified that a decision for new nuclear build will inevitably deprive wind power and energy saving of the capital and political commitment they need. This has already begun to happen in Finland, the first European country to restart building reactors. Sir Jonathon Porritt, Blair’s environmental adviser, says that once a pro-nuclear decision was made, government and industry “will not think any more about renewables and energy efficiency.” We would, in effect, be putting all our eggs in one basket — and, appropriately, they would be fragile. A single nuclear accident, anywhere in the world, would smash them. Professor Sir David King — the government’s chief scientist, and consistently its global warming conscience — supports new reactors because he says we will need “every tool in the bag” to fight the climate change. But if he and Tony Blair get their way, we will be left with only one tool, and a blunt one at that.
There have been too many false dawns, but if you squeeze your eyes tight shut you can imagine, just for a moment, that Rabin has risen from his grave and that the stupid and bloody waste of time and life over the past ten years was just a long detour on the road to a Middle East peace. Even now the enemies of peace on both sides are mobilising to stop it, but maybe there is a little hope.
 

President Bush in China: But ‘Hu’ really cares?
Tom Plate

US PRESIDENT George Bush did not get the China Lite treatment this time. China Lite — we suggest — is the soft-core version of reality that the mainland routinely dishes up to visiting VIPs. Especially on the eve of a US presidential visit, dissidents are released, warm statements broadcast, positive articles planted in the Press. This did not happen. Instead, our former Texas governor got a mild dose of something more like “Hu Cares?” For this visit, star dissident figures were rounded up, hidden away, and moved out of the capital; not single dissident VIP on the United States’ “release wish-list” got the royal express bus to the airport and a goodbye-forever exit from the country. Nor was there much warm-and-fuzzy TV footage, either. The US president’s commendable (and actually somewhat moving) visit to a religious service at one of Beijing’s few officially sanction protestant churches was noticeably absent from official Chinese TV. It was the president’s politically harmless mountain-bike escapade that got the most video coverage from the state-controlled media.
Also missing was any dramatic joint press conference such as the memorable one featuring the friendly but feisty verbal exchanges between Hu’s predecessor Jiang Zemin and President Bill Clinton that might have risked getting out of hand. Of course, Bush is no Clinton when it comes to the glib response routine; then again, the stiff and formal Hu is not exactly looking like the second coming of Jackie Chan in the jokes department! It would be easy to argue that the president got what he deserved in China. Earlier in the week in South Korea, the Texan seemed to brush off the careful and consistent efforts of the Roh government to engage North Korea in a process of eventual reconciliation. Serious people can have honest disputes about these tactics, but Korean reconciliation is obviously far more important to Koreans than to Americans. Would a little more presidential deference have hurt? China might have preferred that, too.
What’s more, many central issues were engaged, from intellectual-copyright to currency valuation. In various ways, they are all tough. US media reviews of Bush’s performance tended to focus in the president’s low profile on human rights while inside China. But Bush had been clear enough about this in Kyoto; insulting those who invited you to visit while in their living room is not considered good manners in either Austin or Beijing. Bush did the right thing in this respect. Other commentators attributed Hu’s aloofness to his growing sense of China’s rise and America’s fall. Hold on a minute! China is rising but it’s not there yet; America has stumbled (mainly in Iraq) but it has a long, long way to go before any colossal geopolitical fall. It’s true that in Mongolia a day later, Bush did sit beneath a statue of Genghis Khan, a statuary testimonial to the far-off time when Mongolia once ruled one of the world’s greatest empires. But China should have no worry about US invasions. That’s not going to happen.
Hu’s uptight attitude is probably due to two factors. One is the mountain of problems (unemployment, social unrest, income mal-distribution) he sits on top of. The other is a measure of uncertainty about where the US is truly coming from these days. China’s leader is well aware of all the talk in America about ‘containment’ of China. But he must be made to understand that many Americans do not see the need for that kind of hard-line policy — at least not yet. Noting the mess in the Middle East and other problems, many Americans might well say something quite different: “Contain China?” Perhaps the US should start thinking about containing itself. Both the US and China need to worry a little less about each other and start working together more. We don’t need a bilateral fantasyland that denies the realities of our many differences. But neither do we need to see or help generate a renewal of Cold War paranoia.