This Ramadan, get over moonfighting...

Bismi llāh, wa l-ḥamdu lillāh, wa ṣ-ṣalātu wa s-salāmu ‘alā rasūli llāh, wa ‘alā ālihī wa ṣaḥbihī wa man wālāh

This Ramaḍān, instead of engaging in the classic but fruitless annual Ramāḍan tradition of moonfighting, think about your many fellow brothers and sisters who are suffering around the world. Think about your brothers and sisters particularly in:

• Syria – they risk their lives just to walk across the street and buy some ifṭār
• Palestine – they've been living in oppression for more than 60 consecutive Ramaḍāns
• Egypt – they head into Ramaḍān with their land in turmoil
• Iraq – a war-torn nation, they enter Ramaḍān with their nation potentially heading into another war
• Central African Republic – they've been massacred in cold blood, harassed and forced to flee their homes—a reality they've had to live with for more than half a year
• Burma – they're being tortured and harassed, their villages literally burned to the ground and their families forced to flee—to the neighbouring Muslim lands whose governments heartlessly reject them and send them back
• Afghanistan – a nation embroiled in war for more than a decade

Moonsighting is for the mashāyikh and ‘ulamā’ to discuss and make decisions on. All we laypeople need to do is follow a reliable scholar and/or adopt a sound position regarding this issue. We laypeople should't be fighting over such issues, for such fighting sows further division within the community.

I'll leave you with a quote from Sh. Abdul Wahab Saleem from a recent post on his Facebook page:

For those who feel that they have so much knowledge that they should be making tall claims about how this committee or that committee is opposing the Sunnah of our beloved Messenger -SAWS-, these issues are not conclusive. Traces of discussions on calculations and moon-sighting have always been found in the encyclopedic works of Islamic law. Many of the people who have supported calculations in modern times are some of the biggest proponents of the Sunnah our Prophet -SAWS-. People who have dedicated their entire lives to the Sunnah have defended this idea.
Just to name one of those, Sh. Ahmad Muhammad Shakir (d. 1958), who is known to be the Muhaddith of his times. In either case, this post is not encourage an opinion over another. It is, however, to humble us and remind us of the fact that, like always, there is a deeper discussion about these issues among the scholarly class than what may surface in your casual family dinner a week before Ramadan.