Sighting of Eid moon controversy

THE central Ruyet-i-Hilal Committee has once again failed to make a timely (some might also want to add correct) announcement about the sighting of the Eid moon. A short while after the start of its deliberations on Tuesday evening, some TV channels quoted it as having declared that the Shawwal moon had not been sighted, and therefore Eid-ul-Fitr would be celebrated on Thursday. Which, as per a report carried by this paper a day earlier, was in accord with astronomical parameters. However, a little later, TV channels started running news alert strips of reports - backed by the Mardan nazim, several DCOs, and later ANP leader Ghulam Ahmad Bilour - of the moon having been sighted in some districts of the Frontier province. The Central Ruyet Committee went into session to determine the veracity of the new evidence. The meeting went on and on, until 10:45 when the committee chairman, Mufti Munibur Rehman, appeared on TV screens to announce that firm evidence about the sighting of the Shawwal moon had been received, and hence the Eid would be celebrated on Wednesday. Interesting, the evidence he mentioned came not from NWFP, but from Badin in Sindh. A few Imams in Lahore and at least three other Punjab cities, remained unconvinced, and led the Eid prayers on Thursday instead of Wednesday. The late night decision, of course, created all sorts of problems for those who, following the first announcement about the Eid falling on Thursday, had postponed their last-minute shopping as well as those who had planned to leave for their far-off family homes the next day.
Even if it was for a small section of the people, the Ruyet-i-Hilal Committee managed, like so many times in the past, to spoil the joy of Eid. It also gave cause to some like the JUI chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman to vent their anger at the committee chairman, demanding his resignation. The issue, though, is not one of individual competence; it is related to the manner in which the decision is made. If the procedure requires that the committee must give due consideration to evidence it receives from sources other than its provincial bodies, it had little choice but to look at the evidence that NWFP’s political leadership wanted to be given due attention. Something can, and should, be done to avoid such a situation in the future. Since that province, due to its geographical location, is almost always ahead of the other parts of the country in claiming Shawwal moon sighting, it would be better if the committee is permanently headquartered in Peshawar rather than Karachi or, like earlier on, in Lahore. Better still, perhaps there is need to consider relying on astronomical calculations to determine the exact time and location of the lunar appearance. In this age when scientific knowledge has made it possible for man to leave his footprint on the moon, we can save ourselves a lot of trouble and unsavoury controversies. The Ulema from local as well as international institutions of Islamic learning, such as Egypt’s Jamia Azhar, need to be asked to put their heads together and give a well reasoned decree - one which satisfies all shades of religious opinion - to settle the issue once and for all.
 

Reasons for financial wreck

SUCH is the panic that has gripped Americans, in no small measure thanks to the dire disaster warnings of President George W. Bush himself, many are extremely grateful that Congress has finally passed the rescue package to bail out US banks by buying their “toxic loans” at a likely cost to the US taxpayer of up to $700 billion. “Main Street” resents the bailout of Wall Street but there is a general acceptance, albeit through gritted teeth, that if the massive financial rescue had not gone ahead, everyone would have suffered from an economic collapse and this is almost certainly true. The problem is that America has been here before and each time it has been the ordinary Joe Public who has picked up the tab. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 had a variety of causes but what spun the markets into collapse was the existence of a pyramid of holding companies and investment trusts that had no other purpose than to hold shares in each other. Thus the profits in a rising market were magnified as shares rose. However when the markets turned down, the inverse effect kicked in and this apparently magical method of making money led to a rapid collapse of the house of cards that these companies had constituted. Part of the problem with the 1929 crash was lack of regulation. The US financial authorities, of course, acted to ensure that such a disaster would never occur again. And with the occasional hiccups, for a little over 50 years, there was no financial meltdown. But in 1982 Congress was persuaded to liberalize regulation of the Savings and Loan (S&L) industry to encourage its growth, hitherto hindered by “unnecessary limitations” on where and how it could invest. The result eventually was the collapse of some 650 of these S&L companies — once a byword for prudent investment. The cost to the US taxpayer was ultimately $1.4 trillion — which given inflation is a significantly larger sum than that being laid out this week to rescue Wall Street from its latest piece of snake-oil salesmanship.
The common denominator to each and every financial collapse worldwide — and the Americans are not alone in suffering these disasters, which began with the British South Sea Bubble of the 1720s — is not, however, simply lack of regulation. It is rather the idea that fortunes can be made at a distant remove from economic fundamentals. In essence banking involves providing the funding to allow a business to produce goods that it can sell at a margin, repay the loan and take the difference to invest in further production and productive capacity. Bankers and indeed shareholders invest in good companies. They are the only absolute producers of value. There will be other investment opportunities such as in commodities like oil and gold, but in essence all of these investments are made in visible, calculable assets. The minute the investment itself becomes invisible, it can neither be properly regulated nor assessed. That is what has produced this latest financial wreck.

—Arab News