Two Eids And A Calendar: Eid Confusion Yet To Be Cleared

Two Eids And A Calendar: Eid Confusion Yet To Be Cleared
PESHAWAR: Moon-sighting for Eid has always been an issue in Pakistan and none of the successive governments has ever been able to address it. Due to this confusion the whole nation gets divided every Eid and this division leads to the celebration of two Eids in one same country.

The same thing happened this Eid as well when the KP government officially announced the Eid on Tuesday and the federal government was yet to even start looking for the moon in the sky. So all the efforts to unite the nation on one Eid went in vain.

It is the first time in the in the history of Pakistan that a provincial government is all set to celebrate Eid a day ahead of the rest of the country.



On this occasion, the KP minister for information Shaukat Yousafzai, in his video message, argued that a number of moon sighting testimonies from almost every part of the province had been received, thus the KP government had decided to celebrate Eid on Tuesday.

Talking to a private TV channel, Yousafzai also proposed appointing Mufti Shahabuddin Popolzai as the chairman of Ruet-e-Hilal committee and let Mufti Muneeb rest for some time since ‘the decisions of Popolzai had always proved right’.

Responding to his statement while talking to a private TV channel, Mufti Muneeb rejected the proposal.

On the other hand, Mufti Shahabuddin Popolzai, the head of Masjid Qasim Ali Khan in Peshawar, was heading the meetings in his own right and after receiving a number of testimonies from around the province decided the Eid to be celebrated on Tuesday.



Talking to media after the meeting, Mufti Popolzai said that a number of testimonies had been received from Mardan, Hangu, Buner, Bannu and Charsadda.

Popalzai has a vast following in the region and is considered a ‘brave’ cleric by the locals.

Earlier, Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry was trying to unite the whole nation on one Eid and end the tradition of double Eids with the help of a scientific lunar calendar. But it seems it’ll take a few more years before our people can grasp concepts as basic as scientific evidence.