Cotabato City—Bangsamoro Grand Mufti Abdulraof Guialani has declared that the start of the Ramadan fasting month will be on Tuesday, March 12.
This developed as the crescent moon had not risen visible as of 8:00 p.m. Sunday, when a regional team of lunar observers officially reported to the Dharul-Ifta’ (House of Opinion) that they have not seen the moon from where they were stationed at several sites in the five-province Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM)
In his official declaration on Sunday evening, Mufti Guialani also enumerated in his Arabic speech other countries that have also declared Tuesday as their first day of fasting this year.
Other sources also named Australia, India, Oman, Indonesia and Singapore, aside from the Philippines, as the countries whose Muslim residents will start fasting on Tuesday.
Fasting during Ramadan or ‘sawm’ is the fourth of the Five Pillars of Islam. The other pillars are Declaration of Faith (shahada), Prayers (salat), Donation to the Community (zakat), and Pilgrimage at the Mecca (hajj).
The dawn-to-dusk Ramadan fasting is an absolute abstinence from daytime in-take of foods and drinks. It is obligatory to male and female Muslims from the age of puberty—except on menstrual days and for lactating mothers, among females, and for people with serious illness and physical incapacity.
The purification in Ramadan fasting also restrains married couples from daytime intimate physical or sexual contact.
The spiritual and physical benefits of fasting are explained during this month, usually, in religious forums, as well as in Friday preachings at the mosques, starting with: “O! Ye who believe: Fasting is prescribed unto you, as it was prescribed to those before you, that ye may learn self-restraint in fear of God.” (Qur’an II: 128)
In different ages in the Biblical time, fasting had been taught by the prophets. These are found in the following verses: Daniel 10:3; Ezra 8:23; Isaiah 58:6; Joel 2:12; Acts 13:2; Psalm 69:10; Acts 14:23; Exodus 34:28; Nehemiah 1:4; Matthew 6:16-18 to name a few.
Scholars struggled to resolve an old contention in a persistent issue that at some point the Prophet may have meant the “naked eyes” of the observant when he said in this Hadith: “Whenever you sight the new moon (of the month of Ramadan) observe fast, and when you sight it (the new moon of Shawwal) break it, and if the sky is cloudy for you, then observe fast for thirty days.”
Later-day scholars matched this with another Hadith in which the Messenger said: “God has not created anything better than reason.” Scholars in that sense contend that heavenly bodies being far enough may not be reasonably visible more often, and so the need for the use of modern optical ground instruments like Aperture Spherical Telescope, or any refracting telescope, the terrestrial telescope, also known as a Galilean telescope.
