One Witness or Two? Ramadan Moon Sighting Rules

Alhamdulillah. Continuing.

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In and we are discussing the chapter regarding the beginning of Ramadan, the end of Ramadan, moon sightings and so forth. Continuing where we left off yesterday morning and we had left off basically if we boil it down that in order for the month to be considered a a valid sighting of the moon for the month of Ramadan is at least one trustworthy person Muslim And a siding of two people is required for the beginning of Sha, the 10th month. And we discussed this at length. We discussed the evidences for this. forth.

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He says there's a narration collected by And it's a statement of alithb one of the governors of Mecca he said the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaii wasallam taught us and left us with the knowledge with the commandment that we are to begin our warship and begin our and specifically our worship for hajj. So, the month of Dulah upon seeing the crescent, the crescent of and if we did not all see it, but two trustworthy individuals inform us that they did see it, then we will begin and commence our month of worship. based on their testimony. So we have here Iban Omar tells the prophet sallallah.aii alaihi wasallam. I saw the crescent for Ramadan. He fasted and told everyone else to fast based on the testimony of Ibar. And we have elsewhere that outside of the month of Ramadan, all other 11 months and specifically is a minimum of two trustworthy testimonies that they have seen the crescent for the foraram for etc. And the same goes for the end of the month.

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For.

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10B. forch.

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He says a point here that needs to be understood is that we now have understood the bare minimum of what is required for testimony in words in in terms of testimony for citing the crescent of Ramadan. Now, this is, as we mentioned before, this is something that is for the leadership to determine. However, the general masses of the Muslim, when do they fast? The author here tells us that if a person were to hypothetically see the crescent of Ramadan on his own and people did not fast and the rest of his community did not fast meaning they didn't have a sighting or whatever then the person would not fast on his own because the prophet sallall.aii alaihi wasallam has said according to Abu fasting begins when you all fast and breaking your fast happens when you all break your fast and slaughtering on the 10th of is when the majority slaughters. So as we've mentioned before that the individual person there is no such thing as a minority of people fasting while a majority of their community are not. The month is not the crescent itself. The month is indicated by the crescent. The month commences officially when the majority of our community begin to fast. The end of Ramadan is when the majority of our community break their fast. etc. He says.

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He says, "And so one of the common mistakes that people make is that and this is speaking more towards even for us it applies honestly that u if we were to go back to the days before the internet, if we were to go back to the 60s,7s, 80s, right? And even before that, some of our elders here that are with us now can recall this. And that is that how did Ramadan usually start? Well, it started we would contact home wherever that is. Whether you're from Fallstine or you're from Jordan or you're from Pakistan or you're from India, people would be in contact on the phone with their family members. And when they would have the official announcement in their country that they are commencing fast, they would fast with them. And this is how it went for a long time. And that is correct. Nothing wrong with that. especially being that a moon sighting happening all the way in the east by deduction will happen in the west even if we don't necessarily see it because of clouds or what have you. But as things became more as things became more generalized, this has become less and less of an issue because before you'll have people that are from people that are following Saudi, for instance, are fasting on a day different than those who are following Libya or those who are following Morocco or people from Jordan are fasting on a day different than the people that follow al. And so the issue became that in America here we'd have sometimes even in the same household in the same house. Could you imagine some of the family members are fasting and others are not. Some are having Eid. They're putting on their Eid clothes and going out to Eid while the others are sitting at home in their rags waiting for Eid tomorrow and they're fasting, right? And I'm sure that many of us here can remember that this largely was driven by politics largely. Not always, but largely because after all, how could the Khalij countries Saudi, Kuwait, etc. fast on the same time as Iraq after what they did in Kuwait after the Gulf War? Absolutely not. We have what you know what happens to our dignity if we do that. And so we've got people fasting with one country, others fasting with another country, and then it becomes a point of contention. Who are you loyal to? What is your view on the Gulf War? What is your view on the Iranian Iraq war, etc. And so these things have thankfully, alhamdulillah, phased out a lot. However, it's still has its remnants in our communities. We are not living in Iraq. We're not living in Saudi. We're not living in Jordan. We're not living in India. We are living in America. And so we all need to fast with each other and break our fast with each other. not just in the same masid but in the same general area in the same town in the same village in the same city and there is no excuse for us to be differing on these kinds of things. Alhamdulillah for the most part we have this togetherness and these are issues that are debated amongst as we mentioned the leadership of the communities. What kind of sighting are we going to go with? Is it an international sighting? Is it a regional sighting? Is it a local sighting? Etc. When I lived in the Caribbean for many years, there are the population is 1.5 million for the whole country. And the Muslim population is about 10% 10 to 12% which is a huge minority, right? Muslims everywhere. And you arrive there and you think, "Wow, this is amazing. Islam has really taken off down here." And you see how many masids there are. If you could imagine how many masids there are for a 100,000 people. Not all of them are practicing. Not all of them are going to the masid. More than 250 mids in this little little little country. Why? You think, "Oh, mashallah, the Muslims needed it." No, that's actually not the case. The case is is that everyone who goes to a masid, you got a group that go to a masid, they disagree with the masid. They say, "I'm going to build my own masid." And then they go and they put their little plot and they build their own masid. And then then those people that branched off and built their own masid, then they differ with each other. And the other one goes across the street and builds another masid. So you've got dozens of massagid literally some of them across the street from each other, okay, with only 10, 15 people in it. And when the moon sighting for Ramadan would come around, oh my goodness, you have people fasting, you'd think that it's only two choices, right? But actually some of them would be fasting in a difference of three and four days from each other. This differing is one of the most major sins a Muslim and a Muslim community can commit. This division this you know each person taking their own initiative to do their own thing and all this causes is division and discord. We have to be patient with each other, right? that is the nature of leadership. The nature of leadership is that the follower doesn't necessarily always agree 100% with leadership, but we have to be able to say to ourselves, we have to have good thoughts about each other, not be suspicious. And we cannot just say if things don't change in this way I'm going to go do my own thing. Sometimes that may be necessary if there are drastic it's in a drastic situation but for the most part the default is we are patiently to each other. We don't just retreat and do our own thing. We stick together and we work out our differences. It's kind of like gears how gears work together. When you put them together, each of the gears begins to break in with each other. So, little chips of steel come off on this gear and little chips come off on this gear until they find their harmony. Right? There has to be a level of cooperation and there has to be a general adherence to follower and leader otherwise we'll never get anything done. If if everyone is a leader who's going to follow right and so tomorrow inshallah we will start on some of the rulings of fasting. Fore! Fore! Fore! Wasam.