Celebrations, as the month of forgiveness arrives
Weekly Trust is also joining its Muslim readers in this celebration. We pray to Allah to help us reap the blessings of the month and May He forgives all our sins. We also want to seize this opportunity to wish the teeming readership a happy and blissful Ramadan. This column has already become an annual […]
Weekly Trust is also joining its Muslim readers in this celebration. We pray to Allah to help us reap the blessings of the month and May He forgives all our sins. We also want to seize this opportunity to wish the teeming readership a happy and blissful Ramadan.
This column has already become an annual occurrence. Like the previous years, the column would, inshaAllah, feature throughout this month of Ramadan. Because of the relevance of last year’s columns to our discussion, they will be adopted with more minutiae, where necessary, as Islamic injunctions, as we know, do not change.
This year’s Talk would begin by sharing some parts of a communiqué issued at the end of a 3-day National Conference on moon sighting that was organized recently by the Islamic Studies Section, Department of Education, of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria.
We are sure the observations and the resolutions of the conference would be of immense benefit for the readers of this column as almost all the gray areas regarding moon sighting in Nigeria were addressed by the conference.
The theme of the Conference was “Moon Sighting in Islam: A challenge to Muslim Unity in Nigeria”, and it was attended by over 200 participants from the academia, religious organizations, Government and traditional institutions from different parts of Nigeria. Fifty four (54) papers were presented and discussed on various sub themes of the Conference.
Observations of the conference are as follows:
1. Controversy over moon sighting possesses serious threat to Muslim Unity in Nigeria.
2. Many Nigerian Muslims lack confidence in the moon sighting system of the country.
3. General ignorance of the teaching of Islam especially on moon sighting exits among the Muslim Ummah.
4. The practice of searching for the new crescent among the Muslim Ummah suffers great neglect.
5. Proper documentation of information on persons who sight the moon is not satisfactorily given.
6. Various moon sighting committees in the country are not properly coordinated.
7. Some religious leaders and organizations issue counter directives to that of the President General of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in Nigeria (SCIAN).
8. The occurrence of Eid al-Adha and Arafat on the same day is always a source of controversy in Nigeria.
9. There is no harm in using astronomical knowledge to complement the effort of moon sighting within the provisions of Shariah.