Every year, just before Ramadan and Eid, the moon debates roll around like clockwork: Has the moon been sighted? Which day is Eid? Who gets to decide? WhatsApp groups buzz with screenshots. Masjids announce different start dates. Families find themselves on separate schedules. It’s easy to reduce it all to disorganisation or blame it on our inability to “unite”—but maybe there’s something more going on. Something deeper.

For over a millennium, Muslims did not celebrate a globally organised Eid, waiting for a WhatsApp notification, so how did we get here?

Our relationship with the moon isn’t only spiritual, it’s political, historical, and deeply human. It tells us how we relate to time, to authority, to tradition and to each other, not just on an individual level, but as collective communities trying to hold on to something sacred in a world that often feels disconnected from it. 

Time, in many ways, is one of colonisation’s most invisible weapons. The imposition of fixed time zones, calendars, and clocks under colonial rule was part of a broader attempt to control not just land but the rhythm of people’s lives, severing communities from natural cycles, their ancestral wisdom of marking life, and discrediting indigenous knowledge. And yet, despite it all, Muslims continue to orient themselves around the natural signs of the earth. We pray five times a day, guided by the sun. We fast by the moon. Whether we realise it or not, we are in a relationship with the cosmos. 

Buckle up. This isn’t just a conversation about crescent sightings. It’s about who we are, our ongoing questions about who holds religious authority, and whether we still know how to live a life rooted in a rhythm older than the empire. 

What lies at the root of these moon war debates, and what do they signify? 

That’s exactly what Imad Ahmed, who researches lunar visibility calendars at the University of Cambridge and is currently doing a PhD on Moon Wars, wondered after a trip to Cape Town during Ramadan many moons ago. What he found was that moonsighting was a community-centred ritual that had been preserved and passed on.

“I went on holiday to Cape Town in South Africa, and I found something extraordinary,” he says. “Every month, especially for Ramadan and Eid, the entire community goes out onto the beach to look for the moon together. There are TikToks about it now, drone footage, you can see thousands of people.”

This wasn’t a small, symbolic gesture. It was thousands of people, families, aunties, and kids playing on the sand, all out looking for the moon together. They see it, or they don’t, but they start Ramadan or Eid as one. No Twitter threads, no confusion, no “is it Eid tomorrow or not?” group chats.

“That agency is in the hands of the community,” Imad continues. “And when I saw that, I was blown away, because South African Muslims aren’t living in a Muslim country. They’re a minority, just like us, but they have a united Eid.”

For someone who grew up in East London, where mosques on the same road would celebrate Eid on different days, witnessing this joyous community event sparked a question in Imad: why can’t we do this in the UK?

“What motivated me even more was this idea of community. Why couldn’t we go out and sight the moon together? That was the first seedling of the idea, to try and start an initiative to revive the practice of local moon sighting, which led to the founding of New Crescent Society, an organisation that leans into the rich Muslim heritage of astronomy and celebrates the relationship between Islam, science and faith.”

“For our generation, many of us have only read about it in books, or heard that somewhere on earth, someone is looking for the moon. But it’s not something we’ve actually experienced. The older generation, my father’s, my grandfather’s, they still remember, dimly, that we used to go out and look for the moon. It’s something that’s disappeared from our communities. And seeing it in South Africa, that’s what made me want to bring it back here, in the UK.”

So we sat down with Imad and had a fascinating discussion on the history and perception of time, moonsighting at the time of the Prophet ﷺ, and what our relationship with the moon reveals about how we relate to time and authority. Not just on a personal level, but as collective communities.

So What Did Moon Sighting Look Like in the Time of the Prophet ﷺ? 

Before the age of synced calendars and hourly Google notifications, it is clear that time was deeply local and communal. In the time of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, the moon wasn’t just a marker of the Islamic months, it was a physical sign that people looked for with their own eyes. The rhythm of life followed the sky, not printed or digital calendars.

There’s a hadith where the Prophet ﷺ is reported to have said, “We are an unlettered Ummah; we do not write or calculate. The month is like this, this, and this”, gesturing with his hands to show twenty-nine or thirty days. (Sunan an-Nasa’i)

At the time, neighbouring Jewish communities had shifted from visual moonsighting to a pre-calculated calendar, 500 years before the Prophet ﷺ appeared. Some companions asked whether Muslims could do the same. But the Prophet’s ﷺ response wasn’t just practical, it was philosophical. 

As Imad explains, “One interpretation is that he was saying don’t calculate, we are a nation whose quality is that we are connected to the fitrah (our natural disposition). That we’re a people rooted in the rhythms of the natural world.”

For centuries, Muslims across the globe continued this practice. Communities would gather and sight the moon locally. There was no concept of a globally synchronised Eid, nor an expectation that Morocco and Malaysia would break their fast on the same day.

As Imad put it, “Two hundred years ago, you couldn’t imagine that someone in Australia is going to listen to somebody in Morocco. It just wasn’t possible. So time was always something localised in the past.”

That impossibility changed with the rise of the empire.

Today, we live under what Imad calls a “global regime of time”, a world in which May 2025 exists everywhere, simultaneously. That kind of uniformity only exists because of the empire and its infrastructure. “You can’t have global time without a global empire,” he says. And with it came a mechanical, capitalist clock: precise, efficient, and deeply disconnected from nature.

The Qur’an says: “Indeed, the number of months ordained by Allah is twelve—in Allah’s Record since the day He created the heavens and the earth.” (Surah At-Tawbah 9:36) 

Contrary to the standards set by imperialist structures, Islam is deeply cosmological. It roots us in rhythm. Our fitrah is to be in sync with the cosmos: five daily prayers tied to the sun’s movements, the new moon marking our months, Jumu’ah each week, Ramadan each year, we go through constant cycles of renewal, of our faith, our alignment and our daily living. Even our direction in prayer was once determined by the stars. 

The Qur’an says, “Also by landmarks and stars do people find their way..” (Surah An-Nahl 16:16)

On one level, that means literal navigation. But on the other hand, it suggests that reconnecting with the natural world is itself a form of guidance, a practice of alignment, of listening, and of being led.

Another interesting fact is that time in the Prophet’s ﷺ community wasn’t marked by numbered years but by shared memories. Events were anchored in experience: the Year of the Elephant, the Year of Sorrow. “That’s a very local, intimate way of marking time,” Imad reflects. “It’s a calendar built on community storytelling.”

We still do this, in our own way. We talk about the year of Covid, the time before lockdown, or things happening “during the World Cup.” But those references are often global and digital, rather than tangible and spiritual. They lack the rootedness of looking at the same sky, together.

As the Islamic polity expanded, timekeeping became more structured. Numbers entered the picture: 1446 AH, 2025 CE. And while there’s value in standardisation, something was lost along the way, something that early Muslims had, and that we might long for now. “I admire those early communities,” Imad says. “They were marking time with shared memories. That must have been something really special.”

How Did We Get to the Moon Wars?

So, how did we go from a communal, localised moonsighting to debating moonsightings, Eid dates, and whose moon to follow?

Imad traces the shift to the 1940s and 50s, when many Muslim immigrants first arrived in the UK. Most had come from places like Bangladesh, India, Pakistan or Egypt, where local moonsighting was part and parcel of everyday life. But on arriving here, things changed. “My dad remembers trying to sight the moon,” Imad shares. “He said it was too smoggy. They gave it a go, but couldn’t see it.”

So people began to “outsource” the moon. At first, they followed their home countries. Some followed Egypt, as Al-Azhar had prestige in the Muslim world. Over time, different UK communities looked to Morocco, South Africa, Turkey, or Saudi Arabia. And because the moon isn’t seen at the same time everywhere, we ended up with different start dates for Ramadan and Eid, even within the same city.

But the real shift, Imad says, was deeper than astronomy.

“There was a time when many didn’t really believe you could see the moon here. Not scientifically, but spiritually. They didn’t believe that the moon belonged here.” He recalls stories of people sending bodies ‘back home’ for burial, chemically preserving them rather than laying them to rest in British soil. As if Islam belonged elsewhere. “An imam I spoke to put it this way: ‘We saw the land as kafir and the sky as kafir too.’” That sense of unbelonging ran deep.

And beneath the moon sighting debates lies a bigger question: Who gets the authority on time?

“Moonsighting debates aren’t just about scripture,” Imad says. “They’re about who gets to decide what time is.” For some, time is determined by political power; Saudi Arabia, as custodian of the pilgrimage, takes on that role. For others, the moon belongs to everyone, and no institution can own it.

Imad believes that the moon is a quasi-transcendental symbol that is beyond political and religious authority. No one owns it nor controls it except for Allah. You don’t need a scholar or a government to witness it. Even if you’re blind, your circadian rhythm is connected to the moon. If you are human, you exist and are connected to the moon. You are allowed to look at the moon, marvel at it and take joy in it, and no one can stop you.

“This is one of Islam’s unique features,” Imad reflects. “There’s no clergy, no pope, no gatekeepers. The moon, like the calendar, belongs to the community and its people.”

All of the ancients from the beginning to today were connected to the moon in some way. We are perhaps a bit more fragmented and distant from it. But of course, this disconnection from the land, the sky, and our own sense of time didn’t happen in a vacuum.

If we go back in time, colonisation not only disrupted where we lived, but how we lived and our relation to nature, and time itself. 

The Impact of Colonialism and Capitalism on How We Mark Time

The most significant divide that colonialism created was our relationship with time itself. London is home to Greenwich Mean Time, the global reference point for time. That in itself speaks volumes. You can’t have a global calendar without a global empire. The political logic of the empire is that it must be subjugated to a single unified regime of time, which is more efficient for control, for trade, for rule. 

Capitalism, as an extension of colonialism, only deepens the measuring hours, clocking in and out, syncing the whole world for factory hours, wage systems, train schedules, and financial markets. Time became industrial, monetised, extractive and not our own.

But the impact wasn’t just logistical. Colonised people who once lived by seasonal shifts (think: Persians celebrating the new year with the spring equinox), lunar cycles, or local solar rhythms were labelled backwards and morally inferior for not conforming to the 24-hour capitalist clock. That judgement seeped into our subconsciousness and we internalised it communally. 

There is no doubt that the modern sense of time has been shaped by the empire. Even today, some Muslims think it’s more “correct” to follow Saudi, rather than observe the moon locally, willingly giving away their agency, as though time must be flattened into one uniform experience. 

Take Arafah. When we see pilgrims on our screens standing in the plains, something in us assumes, “It must be Arafah for me too.” We struggle to grasp that their sacred time can be different from ours and that our sky might hold a different moon. Because we never question why Tahajjud or Fajr happen at different times for us than for those living in Saudi Arabia. We understand that if it is Maghrib in Saudi Arabia, it can’t be Maghrib in London. But when it comes to Eid, we want uniformity across the globe. Or is that conformity that the empire has pounded into our collective subconscious?

Colonial powers didn’t just redraw borders; they rewrote calendars, flattened differences, and made our rhythms useful to the empire. In many ways, moonsighting debates aren’t just about fiqh. They’re about power. About who gets to decide when sacred time begins, and who benefits from that decision. 

Hence, the debates and fragmentations which is a symptom of deeper postcolonial trauma. Just as trauma shatters the individual, colonialism shattered our communities. Some of the rigidity we see in certain Muslim expressions today, whether around gender, tech, or authority, can be read as trauma responses. A way to reclaim lost power by seeking control and being suspicious of technology, because it was once a weapon used against us.

Are There Any Spiritual Implications of Being Connected to the Moon?

It is important to remember that healing doesn’t come through more control or rigidity. Wholeness begins with returning to rhythm, to nature, to community, to the fitrah within us.

“Islam as I understand it,” Imad says, “is the way of being and living that is most connected to the natural way as you were born. And to be connected to the moon is an aspect of the most natural thing.” 

This connection, Imad believes, is not merely symbolic. There is a beauty to it, it is intuitive and deeply rooted in our fitrah. “You can’t suppress the fitrah. Women want to pray in communal spaces, that’s fitrah. The human being wants to be connected to nature. As much as you try, I don’t think you can suppress it.”

Moon sighting is not simply a ritual. It is a reclaiming of agency, especially against the backdrop of capitalist time systems that can cause time to simply be this passive thing that happens to us, instead of us being actively mindful of it. “Every month we renew our agency collectively, going out as a community and deciding for ourselves whether we saw the moon or not.”

In contrast to the Gregorian calendar, “our agency around our timekeeping is not arrogated to parliament.” Instead, as Imad put it, “ it is a calendar that is marking a human community experience.”

There is something empowering in taking part in the human construction of timekeeping, “If no one saw the moon, did the month begin?” he asks, drawing a parallel to the philosophical conundrum of sound and presence. “It’s a lunar observation calendar that we observed, and the month continued.”

Some reflections question how gender and access intersect with moonsighting. Imad recalls, “There was a month when only women saw the moon… And the scholars said, ‘That doesn’t meet our testimony requirements, until the woman called her son to have a look and his testimony was finally accepted.’” It sparked for him a long contemplation on authority, witness, and who gets to define truth.

As women, we are already attuned to living in cycles, perhaps that’s why moon sighting resonates more with us. It’s also a practice that naturally invites togetherness, a good family activity, and a chance to gather under the same sky, because the moon is for everyone.

Imad sees hope in this very inclusivity. “The moon is for everybody,” he says, returning to the idea like a refrain. “And just like the moon is for everybody, can I be somehow for everybody? Yes, boundaries against abusive people… But how big is my heart?” For him, this is the spiritual meaning of unity, not one imposed from above, but “united hearts leading to the united calendar.”

This, then, is what local moonsighting offers us: not just a method of marking time, but a practice of remembering ourselves, one another, and the rhythm we were created in. “Can we make space for one another in each other’s hearts?” he asks. 

An evening of local moon sighting is not the place to be subjected to long-winded debates. All you have to do is simply look up at the same sky as your neighbour and admire the beauty of the cosmos. That’s how Imad puts it.

“We want to bring the moon back home. We want to partake in beautiful sunnah together and experience the moon in our own localities, in our own country lanes, or on top of our tower blocks, wherever we are,” he tells us. “The moon is far away, but somehow the moon is also in our hands.”

It’s a sentiment that speaks to the heart of the movement: a reclaiming of not just a practice, but of presence. For too long, the experience of moon sighting has felt outsourced, detached from the lives of many Muslims in the UK. But what if we consider the possibility of witnessing the moon right here, amidst the British skyline, no matter how grey the clouds may seem.

“More practically,” Imad adds, “It’s not as cloudy as people think. I know it feels like in the UK it’s cloudy every day, but I promise you, if you actually look, it’s not as cloudy as it feels like. That’s just the mood. Everybody’s down, but it’s not that cloudy.”

After almost eight lunar years of moon sighting across the UK, the New Crescent Society has found that it is entirely possible to see the moon here. “There’s no need to outsource the moon anywhere,” Imad says. “We can have our own calendar here. We can take back control and bring the moon back home.”

And even when it is cloudy, that too has meaning. The weather is part of the story. The Prophet ﷺ himself acknowledged this when he instructed the community to complete 30 days if it was too cloudy to see the new crescent. “He ﷺ’s indicating that the cloud is a part of the calendar,” Imad explains. “And isn’t the cloud a global phenomenon? It’s not cloudy everywhere on Earth at the same time. The scholars who agree with a local calendar say this proves that it’s a local experience, because cloud cover is a local experience.”

In that way, even the moments when we don’t see the moon still matter. They remind us to be patient, to pay attention, to keep showing up. Moon sighting isn’t just about tracking time, it’s about reconnecting with the sky above us, the people beside us, and the One who created it all.