Published in Morning News on January 22, 1967
It was not surprising that your esteem newspaper reported the sighting of the moon in Karachi by five persons one of them being a retired army doctor. This writer knows at least three persons in my neighbourhood who claimed they did see it at the time. And the fact that it is supposed to have been on the horizon for nine minutes only (was calculated beforehand by astronomers) explains why only a few could perceive it that Wednesday evening. In any event, the extraordinary amount of time in which the moon was visible on Thursday evening should settle all doubts. It set after ninety-one minutes, whereas a first moon could occupy, at the most, eighty-three.
And what now? Surely there must be some way out of this dilemma. Perhaps the Egyptian calendar could be adopted. It is already in use in the UAR...Turkey and the countries of North Africa. Or perhaps some of the Ulema could be persuaded to learn the science of astronomy and be convinced that it is possible to predict accurately the appearance of the moon at any place.
Indeed, it is the inflexible attitude of some of our Ulema which is responsible for the confusion. At the Friday prayers in a local mosque, one Mullah made the astonishing remark that the Red moon should be sighted by the naked eye alone, and such "scientific and technological" instruments as the telescope and binoculars should not be made use of. Using the same line of argument, one may easily claim that guns, planes and bombs should not be used in war, as these also are products of science and technology.
It is precisely this sort of intransigence which is bound to make the Ulema unpopular, at least with the intelligentsia, if not with the masses.
This is enough. We have already made ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of the world and other non-Muslim communities. Let us hope that this fact, if no other, influences our religious leaders and convince them of the need to reach an agreement with the Ruet-e-Eilal committee in future.
Shakir Lakhani
Karachi
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