zlacker

>>asim+(OP)
I was unaware until this year that it was based on when the moon was _sighted_, not just on a conventional lunar calendar. This leads to very short notice public holidays in a couple of countries AIUI.

>>rsynno+Xv1
This leads to issues in e.g. Norilsk where it is polar summer during important Islam dates and you can often not see the moon at all.

>>thrift+UQ1
Isn't the decision coming from the "muslim authority" (sorry I don't know the terms) located in the mecca anyway?

>>h1fra+YS1
There is no Muslim authority or institutions, it's decentralized

>>mkouba+1Y1
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that GP is partially correct, in that the lunar sighting is not an individual thing, but done at the communal level by the central authority. It's just that like most religions, Islam has multiple streams, and this there are multiple central authorities.

Is this not how it works? I'm not Muslim, this is what I understood from a Muslim coworker. He also implied that there's some politics involved, in that various Middle Eastern countries align themselves with their political bloc when announcing the day, although any political motivations are "alleged" and not acknowledged.

>>names_+Q12
There's no central authority in Islam like the clergy in Catholism.

However there are legal schools and councils that people trust. Legal schools (or fiqh) were established by famous scholars that nearly everyone recognizes as an expert and were carried on by their students.

From a political standpoint, a lot of Muslims defer to Saudi Arabia because they are the current caretakers of Mecca and Medina.

But generally speaking for everyday normal Muslims they go with whatever their local imam says and go with whatever method the imam used because they are usually the most knowledgeable person around on such matters.