Pakistanis instead of defeating controversy of celebrating Eid on two different days continued with the practice and thus putting all efforts by government to ensure Eid across the country on the same day in vain.
One federal and four provincial Ruet-e-Hilal Committees (official authority designated to announce start of an Islamic month). In the past, Muslim scholars agreed on a certain method to decide the start and end of the month of Ramazan. But with significant advancements in technology in the past few years, these divisions have widened in some regions of the world.
In most countries of the world follow Saudi Arabia and celebrate Eid on the same day as it is celebrated there. However, Pakistan is one of the few countries in region that in some of the years of its history used to celebrates Eid the next day after Saudi Arabia.
On this conflicting issue Religious scholar Allama Raghib Naeemi told to a newspaper that elsewhere in the world including Morocco and Tunisia there is precedent to celebrate the Eidul Fitr with Saudi Arabia. “Even European countries celebrate Eid with Saudi Arabia but that is not the case as according to the Islamic traditions every person has to celebrate Eid according to his geographical locations.
“As far moon birth debate is concerned one thing is for sure Saudi Arabia relay on birth of moon and they predict it few months earlier and they have completely shifted the whole system. They follow the birth of moon and we in Pakistan follow sightseeing of moon,” he said. “After 20 hours of birth of moon we can see the moon,” Naeemi said.
Popalzai and Centuries of controversy
For decades, the Qasim Ali mosque in Peshawar has been synonymous with the moon sighting dissent. Managed by the Popalzai family, the mosque stirs up controversy aplenty. The mosque is situated amidst the hustle and bustle of Peshawar's historic Qissa Khawani bazaar. The mosque holds great sway over people of key districts in KP and FATA.
According to the official records of KP's Auqaf department, the Qasim Ali mosque was built in 1842. The current khateeb Mufti Shahabuddin Popalzai confirms that the tradition of sighting the Ramazan and Eidul Fitr moons goes back to 1825.
Popalzai belongs to the Deoband school of thought. Although he is not averse to modern gadgets — he constantly uses a bluetooth device in his ear to attend calls — as he does not believe that technology should be employed to sight the moon. For this reason, he does not accept Met Office predictions.
Mufti Shahabuddin Popalzai who has strong following in province of Khyber Pakhtun Khuwa was in Dubai. Mosque Qasim in Peshawar and followers of Mufti Popalzai reportedly announced the sighting to moon and Eidul Fitr was celebrated in Peshawar and parts of the KPK.
Even Popalzai was not on screen but his followers in Qasim Ali Khan managed to receive 47 witnesses who sighted moon. (For the declaration of advent of new Islamic month at least 10 credible witnesses are needed for sighting of moon.)The nation divided again on the most jubilated event of the year.
Every year Popalzai announces that the moon has been sighted led the country into a state where everyone is not happy but a monopoly of religio-politco community who always divides the nation on such events where more unity is needed than before.
Dictators dilemmas too!!!
During Ayub Khan’s days, this reached such epic proportions that Eid was declared at sehri time i.e. just before the next morning and people did not know whether to celebrate it or not. This was because Ayub had succumbed to the superstition that if there are two khutbas on the same day (which happened if the day happened to be Friday) the ruler would face trouble.