Salam All,
You may recall I (Qamar Uddin) have mentioned previously that the theory of “global sighting” is connected with the belief the earth is flat and not a sphere, where the possibility of sighting the moon anywhere on earth is equal, regardless of how East or West it comes from. It was not proposed by any Imams of four renowned Sunni Madhabs!
The question arises, where did this flat-earth theory come from? With a quick search on the Internet, it appears the flat-earth theory came from the Jews and Christian beliefs, as illustrated by the two diagrams below.
The Christian faith (revealed over 600 years before Islam), also embraced the same flat-earth concept as core part of their religion (pre-Copernican). They believed the earth was flat with four corners (Revelation 7:1) and the sun and moon rotated round it, as illustrated in the Ancient Cosmology diagram above (and anyone opposing such beliefs were accused of heresy as was the case with the Italian scientist, Galileo in 1633 AD).
It is possible that some Muslim scholars in the past could have mistakenly invented the “global sighting” theory from the Jews and the Christians, as prophesied in the Hadith below.
Narrated Abu Sa`id Al-Khudri: The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "You will follow the ways of those nations who were before you, span by span and cubit by cubit (i.e., inch by inch) so much so that even if they entered a hole of a lizard, you would follow them." We said, "O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)! (Do you mean) the Jews and the Christians?" He said, "Whom else?" [Bukhari]
It is astonishing that so many Muslims living in Western countries with vast clear skies, yet abandoning local sighting as per Sunnah and adopting the theory of “global sighting”, which is based on the centuries old flat-earth concept, which in turn is based on the beliefs of the Jews and the Christians (whom have long since abandoned it and replaced it with the calculation of New Moon Conjunction)!
So, are we willing to abandon the global sighting theory of the Jews and Christians and establish local sighting as per Sunnah?
Wassalam,Qamar Uddin, York (UK)
taught us local sighting. We only really adopt national sighting due to a few factors which cannot be denied. The world has gotten smaller in terms of how quickly news travels. But that still isn't suitable for global sighting.
