My moon or yours?

Byline: F.S. Aijazuddin

IT used to be a tradition amongst some Muslim countries to announce the eve of Ramazan with the firing of a cannon. In Pakistan, that has been replaced by a salvo fired by ignitable ministers, with an equally noisy retort from the Ruet-e-Hilal Committee.

This year proved no different. In the run-up to the holy month of Ramazan, Mr Fawad Chaudhry (federal minister of science and technology) decided to muster the resources of his ministry to challenge again Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman, chairman of the Central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee. Stronger ministers than Mr Chaudhry - once, even the National Assembly - have tried to dislodge the myopic 75-year-old maulana from his sinecure, without success. He has proved as tenacious as Janet Fisher's limpet, attached to 'anything, anyone who showed [him] the least attention'.

Before the advent of this Ramazan, the minister took on the chairman but retreated after the maulana declared the first fast a day later than the minister wanted. The minister bided his time throughout Ramazan and then in its final days, he reopened the debate. He used the media (he was not minister of information and broadcasting for nothing) to present charts and calculations that would have made Galileo proud. The chairman, contemptuous of such unverified data, remained obdurate. He stood his ground, waiting for his own moon to appear.

The notification of the sighting of any Eid moon, by government order, is the responsibility of the Central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee, a department of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony. The committee is expected to rely on information provided from various sources - including 150 observatories of Pakistan's Meteorological Department (spread throughout Pakistan) and evidence of sighting by responsible citizens anywhere in Pakistan. For some arcane reason, the central committee chooses to sight the moon itself, peering through high-tech telescopes from the windswept roof of a commercial bank in Karachi.

The chairman stood his ground, waiting for his own moon to appear.

There is no legal requirement for the committee to meet in Karachi. Any hill top with clear skies would do. That would be cheaper than flying committee members to Karachi and accommodating them in what the chairman quaintly described in an interview as a 'non-star hotel'. The chairman also asserted that 'Pakistan's moon sighting system is best in the world as it incorporates scientific and religious...