{"id":30,"date":"2007-10-02T18:23:21","date_gmt":"2007-10-02T22:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/wasim\/2007\/10\/02\/a-short-history-of-the-end-of-moonsight"},"modified":"2007-10-03T01:34:57","modified_gmt":"2007-10-03T05:34:57","slug":"a-short-history-of-the-end-of-moonsighting-in-boston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/2007\/10\/02\/a-short-history-of-the-end-of-moonsighting-in-boston\/","title":{"rendered":"A short history of the end of Moonsighting in Boston, 2002-2007"},"content":{"rendered":"

2002:\u00a0 <\/strong>Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) was still using moonsighting as the basis for its Ramadan decision.\u00a0 Boston area masajid had united under ISNA, and awaited a decision from their national\u00a0moonsighting committee.\u00a0 Harvard Islamic Society (HIS) also had the policy of following ISNA’s decision, and continued\u00a0the practice\u00a0in 2002.\u00a0 However, in 2002, Boston’s decision to follow ISNA led to some major last-minute trouble.\u00a0 At slightly after sunset Pacific Time, 2 men spotted the Hilal in Arizona.\u00a0 ISNA confirmed the report around 10 PM EST.\u00a0\u00a0 Bostonians were being phoned at 10:30-11 PM that night they had to fast 6-7 hours later.\u00a0 Some managed to hold an impromptu taraweeh at the masjid.<\/p>\n

2004 or 2005:\u00a0<\/strong> The imams in\u00a0Boston formalized their\u00a0own Ramadan and\u00a0Eid Committee.\u00a0 This committee retained the moonsighting process as the basis for determining the beginning and end of the month.\u00a0 The announcement released stated that their decision would not come from any actual moonsighting in Boston, but from the decision of the “majority of Muslim countries” overseas.\u00a0 The whole ISNA thinking of the late 90s had been to sight the moon in N. America, but Boston returned to the old practice of the 80s in order to avoid another mess like 2002.<\/p>\n

The first year this new decision-making process was in place, the Burlington, MA imam attempted to force his masjid to accept the Boston-area decision.\u00a0\u00a0The mosque board overturned him\u00a0and continued to support ISNA.\u00a0 Thus, the Boston area masajid split on the issue for the first time, with the northern suburbs following one day and the south and west suburbs following another.<\/p>\n

2005 – 2006:\u00a0 <\/strong>The practice as established in 2005 continued, where Boston would follow the “majority of Muslim countries” overseas, and there was largely\u00a0unity among Boston’s mosques, with the exception of Masjid An-Nur in Roxbury, which continued to sight the moon for itself (or follow decision of like minded mosques in NYC\/NJ).\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was, however, a major unspoken flaw in the system.\u00a0 The majority of Muslim countries often went with a different date than the one followed in Boston.\u00a0 Boston\u00a0often took\u00a0the decision of Saudi Arabia or Egypt, even when\u00a0Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Iran and Indonesia were united on one date (2005?)<\/p>\n

2006: <\/strong>ISNA formally abandons the moonsighting process, relying exclusively on astronomical calculation as the basis for determining the start\/end of Ramadan.\u00a0 Groups such as Zaytuna\u00a0oppose the decision.\u00a0 Hilal sighting committees form in NYC, Toronto, California and Chicago.<\/p>\n

2007:\u00a0<\/strong> http:\/\/www.isboston.org\/v3.1\/viewitem.asp?MenuID=14&DocID=5113&ItemTypeID=3<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n

The date for the beginning of Ramadan was announced on the ISB website.\u00a0 Although the\u00a0statement notes\u00a0the importance of the moonsighting process, it does not indicate how Boston concluded the first day of fasting before it was possible to sight the moon.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2002:\u00a0 Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) was still using moonsighting as the basis for its Ramadan decision.\u00a0 Boston area masajid had united under ISNA, and awaited a decision from their national\u00a0moonsighting committee.\u00a0 Harvard Islamic Society (HIS) also had the policy of following ISNA’s decision, and continued\u00a0the practice\u00a0in 2002.\u00a0 However, in 2002, Boston’s decision to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":304,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/304"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}