Ramadhan fasting begins Thursday 13th 2007
Bismillah ar-Rahmaan ar-Raheem,
Asalam alaikum everyone,Tuesday 11th September is the 29h of Sha'baan - so after completing 30 days of Sha'baan (Islamic calendar) the blessed month of Ramadhan will begin on Thursday 13th September 2007, since the moon (The Hilal) was not seen anywhere.
"Ramadhan is the month in which the Qur’an was revealed, a guidance for mankind, and clear proofs of the guidance and as a criterion" [Al Baqarah: 185]
Bukhari reported on the authority of Ibnu Omar (R) that the Messenger of Allah (saw) said: "The month consists of 29 nights, so do not fast till you have sighted it (i.e. the new moon), and if the weather were cloudy, then complete it as thirty days."
May Allah SWT accept all our deeds in this month and may we become not of those seasonal Muslims. Let us take our time to increase our Ibadat (worships) and study Islam, Ameen
posted by ummahfilms @ 6:03 PM
9 comments
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9 Comments:
Assalamu Alaikum. I pray you have a blessed Ramadan.
Salam,
I recently came across your youtube channel, mashallah amazing work! i was wondering if you would like to sponsor a Ramadan contest on my site!
Mahdi Yusuf.
as allah gave us brains and intellect and reasoning, why should we still follow something so archaic?
allah set in motion the bodies in the universe. just because we were limited 1400 years ago to what we could witness, we now know without a doubt the movement of the earth and moon.
i would think that as we can eliminate doubt the moon's cycle, we would go with the science and laws allah has laid in place and get more on allah's clock and less on our own shortcomings.
If science > Islam, then why even pray? isn't it contradictory to science?
i'm sorry, that's just an ignorant rhetorical question.
prophet isa was chosen by allah to carry a message to the people. allah's message was written down by humans after his death. the qur'an (and common sense) tell us that the message has been broken.
prophet muhammad was chosen by allah to carry a message to the people. allah's message was recorded in the minds of followers and on paper IN THE LIFE OF THE PROPHET. after muhammad died, humans began to collect his sayings: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th degree. the perfect book the qur'an calls itself is no longer enough to be a muslim. we now follow the supposed words of the prophet. whereas before he was living and thinking when confronted with situations, when he alone bared the responsibility of guiding the seeds of islam as allah communicated with him, when he was actively the prophet and leader of a community, we now base our lives on what? the biases and agendas of those wishing to have power over muslims?
if islam is following the word of man alongside (or over) allah's, why praise allah? who are you are praying to? when allah gave us knowledge in order to learn wisdom, we throw it away to dead men's sayings that have no holiness and authority? when allah says that it's haram to make that which allah has not made haram, what does that mean to you?
when you cease to think for yourself, to not make a mistake and take responsibility, why are you living? you will not get to heaven on rules of men.
look at stars in the night. what you're seeing is millions of years in the past. that is the power of allah. it's allah's gift to us to discover and understand that. it's a pity you're so shallow to appreciate the life and wonders that exist beyond the corruption and distraction of humanity.
you take any revealed religion out of the picture, you can never remove allah. get over the label of islam.
aa
what I would like to know is this...I agree that calculations will be correct 99% of the time. However, our injunction is that we sight the moon and fast. Say, by Allah's power ( a miracle!), He allows ten trustworthy persons to sight the moon...when we are told it is practically impossible to sight it, what do we follow then? The calculations or the sightings?
i'm not quite sure i follow that reasoning. but what you're basically saying is that there's room for error in moon cycles?
so let's assume there is this room for error: why then do we have or use specific times for dusk, dawn, sunrise, sunset, and noon? wouldn't the act of prayer, starting fast and stopping fast all rely solely on this vague idea of observation of surroundings? the timetables that people follow are useless, then.
put in another way: given that allah has set particular things in motion, do we doubt allah's design because we can't see it? if i'm lost and struggling in the desert for 30 days, do i doubt 30 days have passed because i wasn't able to count it? of course not.
if there is a 1% chance that calculations in things such as orbit will be off from reality, that creates a fundamental imbalance in everything in the universe. that could mean there's a 1% chance i just disappear, disintegrate, etc. granted, there is an extremely small probability at the atomic level of an atom breaking down randomly, we live and function on the observation that it won't happen. again, allah's power, that there is this stability in what could have been an infinitely chaotic and unstable reality where nothing can ever take shape.
again, i need to make clear my stance: when men begin to attribute sayings to someone who no longer lives, someone who wielded enormous power and respect, and when these words are to be taken as if they were the word of allah, we immediately walk the path of christians. i see no difference between the hadiths and gospel. the end result is that they're not firsthand accounts. not to take away from the respect that the prophet's companions deserve, but they are not themselves prophets, however blessed they might have been. at most, i can see it as commentary. for 6th century arabia.
nor do i see sharia as being binding. again, it comes to abuse of power, of human nature manifesting itself repeatedly. if present-day saudi arabia wouldn't allow a woman like khadija to prosper, that's a blatant sign that something is wrong, if nothing else (unfortunately, there are a lot of other things). the qur'an was revealed to move humanity forward. the commandments within served to instill a base level of human decency from the corruption and immorality of the time. it was a blueprint for progress, not static words that only relate to arab tribes at a time of conflict. it was, in short, revolutionary.
i'm not looking for conflict for the sake of conflict. i just want to know what we as muslims are doing in this day, and what we'll be doing in the future. and the above hopefully gives a good idea of my...mistrust/confusion in the status quo. it's too easy to seclude oneself and pray and fast, or live in a closed community. there's an entire world out there that needs the compassion allah wishes us to strive towards. as everything is a creation of allah, it's our moral duty to respect and live as best we can with all other creations. i think that goes to the core of islam.
to the big comedown:
The biggest problem I have with your point of view is that you seem to be demeaning the Prophet Muhammad (S's authority. Yes, he was a human being, but he was not an ordinary man. When he spoke, his words were from Allah. When he acted, his actions were in accordance with Allah. Following him is the same as obeying Allah's orders, simply because he did what Allah wanted, and he did it in the most beautiful way possible.
He is not just a dead man. He is the most perfect creature who has ever existed, and this is not a sentiment of humans, it is Allah's own assertion. Allah said himself that the Prophet Muhammad (S) was perfection, and the Prophet (S) himself also asserted this through hadith.
Allah said in the Quran 'wa atee'ullaha wa 'atee'urrasul' which paraphrases into 'and follow Allah and follow the Messenger.' It's clear from this aya that Allah himself equated following him with following the Prophet. Don't think of following what the Prophet said as following a dead human being, but rather as following someone Allah explicitly told you to follow, and doing so is essentially following Allah.
As for moon sighting itself, the fuqaha (jurists) of Islam have said that "astronomical new moons and juristic new moons are not the same: the birth of a new moon astronomically is not its birth according to the jurists of Islam." (Quoted from zaytuna.org, written by Sheikh Hamza Yusuf).
The Prophet Muhammad (S), who is much more than a 'dead man', said to begin the fast when you see the moon, not to begin fasting when the moon is born. There is a fine line between the two. Let me repeat: Ramadan begins when the moon is seen, not when the moon is born. The jurists of Islam have said so, and as they've dedicated their lives to studying Islam, and they are more knowledgable than I am, I will accept their answer. I don't think it's wise to disagree with them when they have so much more knowledge on the subject.
As for your reasoning that basing the beginning of Ramadan on the sight of the moon rather than on calculations should mean that the time tables we use for prayer are useless... The prayer begins when the time for the prayer has started. So for example, Maghrib begins when the sun sets, not when you see the sun set. With Ramadan, it's the opposite; Ramadan begins when the moon has been seen, and not when the moon has come into existence.
Moon sighting is supposed to be a spiritual undertaking, if you really think about it. Going outside to search for one of Allah's signs, to connect with nature, to anticipate the most wonderful month of the year... isn't that something beautiful? As you yourself have said. 'it's Allah's gift to us to discover and understand that.'
Anyway, I'm sorry that this post is too long, but in case you have read it, please look at this link: http://www.zaytuna.org/forms/cesarean%20abridged3.pdf
I'm sorry if I've offended you or misunderstood you. If I have, please forgive me. And I hope Allah forgives us both in this month.
gulsy1123, i am not demeaning the prophet's authority. i think you fail to recognize that prophet muhammad is not here with us. this has one drastic implication: if the words of the prophet are translated into actions the prophet would never condone, who will correct it? muhammad? NO.
so when women are told they can't drive because their religion doesn't allow it, if i'm told i can't listen to certain music because (wtf?) certain instruments weren't in existence in his time, you really believe the prophet would condone this? by subjecting such harsh, irrational rules or being complacent with the status quo, am i not also demeaning the prophet's authority?
now if you don't agree what some of the hadiths and/or actions that result from abuse of interpretation, where do you draw the line? where does anyone draw the line? what concessions do you make on texts undoubtedly within the reach of corruption, when it was only overheard or said to a companion and not to several members of the community who could, word for word, recite the prophet's sayings?
i absolutely believe in the idea of following allah and the messenger. but there's a fine line with literalism.
there isn't a surah for every single important decision muhammad had to make. and yet...we're supposed to follow his supposed words, literally? in this perfect man, many overlook what made him perfect: the characteristics of a just and righteous leader, a man with a conscience.
the decisions he made in going to war, making treaties with, and dealing punishments to, enemies, and overall protecting the seeds of a community he was the root for had so much more to do than with broad lessons or handfuls of specific rules. everything that could rightfully be attributed to him was done so with the knowledge he gained and his experiences. to take that snapshot of words in one moment, and claim with authority that this is the final saying, throws away all the considerations that led to a judgement or decision. because the fact is, muhammad is not allah. who's to say one hadith wasn't made obsolete a week later because the prophet had an experience that made him realize he was wrong? we couldn't know that unless someone come forth with that knowledge.
in following muhammad, we need to concentrate on the root of what made him worthy of being followed. i will take to my destiny, my grave, that allah does not want blind followers: allah created us with brains and creativity and conscience. if our destiny is to follow a cookie-cutter path and not learn...well, i'll leave it for you to decide if allah wasted time in the human creation. personally, i believe allah gave us what we have to make hard decisions.
every man and woman is responsible for his/her own salvation, and it's incumbent upon them to correct injustices that they see in life. but there's so much emphasis on rules and rituals that, on the surface, only benefit those who carry them out. there is no sake of doing a good deed because it's good or necessary: it's done because it makes allah happy, and consequently, with a mentality that a reward will be bestowed on the person ["insha'allah"].
i'm trying to cover a lot of ground in a little space, so i'm sorry if my response doesn't quite flow nicely. but maybe we have to agree to disagree. i don't for a second believe in literalism in the qur'an, and if i were to believe in the hadith, much less so would i be prone to being satisfied with the idea with what's said is what will always be. otherwise i should believe this:
"I saw a woman hanging from her hair [and] her brain was boiling because she had not covered her hair. I saw a woman who had been hanged from her tongue and hell’s water was being poured into her throat because she had annoyed her husband. I saw a woman in a furnace of fire, hanging from her feet because she had left home without her husband’s permission."
again, i'm not here for the sake of fighting. but i see some fundamental things wrong with islam in the present (undoubtedly led to by wrongs of the past). and i want to know what the deal is. who will step out and think for themselves?
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