Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
The decision to begin or end the fast should be left to the community and not to individuals. When we apply this principle to your local community, you may do well to follow the decision of your congregation or local mosque.
In responding to your question, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and an Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states:
As Imam Ibn Taymiyyah states, the decision to begin or end the fast should be left to the community and not to individuals. He cites the Prophetic statement, “Fast with the people and break the fast with the people; likewise, celebrate the day of sacrifice with the people.”
When we apply this principle to our local community, you may do well to follow the decision of your congregation or local mosque.
As for the methods followed by Muslims in North America, we can divide them into three broad categories:
- One group follows the North American sighting of the moon
- Another group goes by the global sighting of the moon
- And a third group goes by the calculation method.
As an Imam with more than fifty years of experience dealing with the issue, I endorse the last option. The reasons are clear:
- There is no reason for us to spend our precious time when we have clear evidence in the sources to base it on calculation; we have been following the calculation method for determining the prayer times, although it was not the way the Prophet followed.
- The Prophet (peace be upon him) explained why he could not follow the calculation method: “We are a people who do not know how to write or calculate.” Therefore, he had no choice but to resort to physical sightings of the sun and moon.
- Our eminent scholars rejected the calculation method mainly because of the mixup between astrology and astronomy. The former is unscientific, while the latter is now pure science.
Almighty Allah knows best.