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
According to Islamic rulings if there’s a global caliphate every muslim in the world is required to obey that (there’s not one since 1915s). But besides that, all of the religion of Islam (rulings, practices) is capable of graceful degradation, scaling down to even just one person. If there was literally one muslim left on the face of the earth, that muslim would not lack anything in his practice of religion, virtousness or his connection with God. There’s no middleman to God like Christian (Catholic?) priests. Similarly if a group of muslims were to crash on an island in a plane accident, they’ll (and are required to) establish islamic order (sharia) there and function all by themselves. Islam is completely decentralized in this way.