Islamic Calendar Calculation Updated

Some of you may already notice that for the hijri calendar widgets I used the formula from Ummul Qura to calculate the islamic date. The decision to use this formula was, among others, to bring the displayed hijri date in synchronisation with the calendar system that is referenced by many muslim countries. Thus, many users should not need to make adjustment for the displayed date.

However, recently I found a suggestion that I think very excellent is regarding islamic calendrical system. Dr. Khalid Shaukat from Moonsighting.com has proposed a ‘Suggested Global Islamic Calendar‘ based on the global sighting possibility of the new crescent moon. The suggested system would, if muslim ummah agrees, would bring order to the current ‘eid-in-different-days’ situation. The system is also very simple and will synchronise with the day and date that we currently use based on the international date line. As a result the whole world would have the same hijri date on the same christian era date. The start of Ramadan, for example would be on the same day and date througout the whole world.

The plus side of the suggested global islamic calendar compared to the ummul qura calendar is its universality. The ummul qura calendar is based on the crescent position as seen from Mecca. So it is possible that other countries to the west of Saudi Arabia may witness the crescent moon while it is not possible in Mecca. As a result these countries would start the new islamic month while those who follow Ummul Qura would still in the previous month.

With such consideration above and the spirit to bring a global islamic calendar to reality I decided to change update the calculation method for most of my islamic calendar widgets with an option to set the calendar system based on this suggested global islamic calendar.

I hope users of my widgets would also share this spirit of global islamic unification with me.