Mufti Rasheed Ahmed Ludhyanwi (RA)

Mufti Rasheed Ahmed Ludhianwi (RA) negates Saudia Moon Sighting

…It is not known that the num­ber of peo­ple sight­ing the moon in Saudia is of sat­is­fac­to­ry quan­ti­ty. The deci­sion of the Sau­di gov­ern­ment is not only against the estab­lished prin­ci­ples of the Hanafi Fiqh, it is also against com­mon sense there­fore it is not applic­a­ble to Pak­istan. The sigh­ing of a large body is a con­di­tion with­in the Hanafi Fiqh when the hori­zon is clear how­ev­er the Sau­di gov­ern­ment often decides Ramad­han on a sin­gle wit­ness and Eid and Dhul-Hij­jah on a min­i­mum of two witnesses…(Ahsanul-Fatawa, Volume4/Page 417)

Hazrat Maulana Mufti Rasheed Ahmed Lud­hyan­wi (RA) sub­se­quent­ly wrote a let­ter to the respon­si­ble offi­cials in the Sau­di gov­ern­ment regard­ing this mat­ter and was not sat­is­fied with the reply. He (RA) wrote, “I had clear­ly stat­ed my rea­sons for claim­ing that your cri­te­ria for moon sight­ing are against the obvi­ous; how­ev­er I have not received a reply. The rea­sons quot­ed pre­vi­ous­ly are as follows:

  1. It is unusu­al in case of clear hori­zons for just a few peo­ple in the entire coun­try to sight the crescent
  2. Gen­er­al sight­ing is not even observed on the 2nd day of sight­ing i.e. mass­es are unable to see the moon even on the 2nd day)
  3. Full moon should be observed on the 14th or the 15th, how­ev­er accord­ing to your sight­ing it is usu­al­ly viewed on the 16th or the 17th
  4. It is impos­si­ble to sight the cres­cent on the day (or even a day after) when the moon is sight­ed in the east at dawn since the moon sets before the sun­set in those days. How­ev­er the Sau­di gov­ern­ment announces moon sight­ing some­times on the very same day when the moon is sight­ed in the east at dawn
  5. Moon is not sight­ed else­where after the sigh­ing in Saudia even in the west of Sau­di Arabia
  6. The first day of the moon (birth) is been often declared the first of the Islam­ic month, which is illog­i­cal because it would mean that the moon can be sight­ed before its birth (Ahsan­ul-Fatawa, Volume4/Page 418)