wikishia:Featured articles/2025/09
Moon sighting means sighting the crescent of the new moon and is one of the ways to prove the beginning of a lunar month in religion. A remarkable amount of obligatory and recommended acts of worship and rituals such as hajj, fasting, al-Qadr night and some legal issues such as increasing diya (blood-money) in haram months depend on the moon sighting at the beginning of the month. For determining the beginning of the month, Shi'a jurists have different criteria. Different astronomical conditions influence the sighting of the crescent as well.
A remarkable amount of obligatory acts of worship such as hajj and fasting, and many recommended rituals which are specific to a certain timing, as well as some legal issues such as increasing diya (blood-money) in the haram months depend on the moon sighting of the beginning of the month. Therefore, the ways of proving the beginning of a lunar month are discussed in the jurisprudential books. The importance of this issue is more in the month of Ramadan and becomes more sensitive especially in determining the end of this month so that if the month of Ramadan is twenty-nine days, the next day after the last day would be Eid al-Fitr when fasting would be forbidden, otherwise, it would the thirtieth of the month of Ramadan and fasting is obligatory.
This sensitivity and doubt existed in the past as well and hadiths are transmitted from Imams (a) which well show these conditions; however, in the more recent years, with the expansion of communications, sighting or not sighting the moon in different cities and even countries has increased this doubt and perplexity so much that even in one city, two different days have been announced as the Eid al-Fitr.......
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