Religion

Muslim parents in New York City have been lobbying the Department of Education to close schools for their religious holidays, but first they will have to agree on when those are.

 

Last Friday, all five mosques in the Concourse area celebrated Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, a month-long period of fasting. But other mosques in the city celebrated the occasion on Saturday. That meant that Muslim children who attended the Concourse-area mosques had to miss school, while those who attended the others mosques did not.

 

Since January 2006, the Coalition for Muslim School Holidays, a group made up of more than 50 labor, religious, community and advocacy organizations, has been lobbying the Department of Education to close schools on Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, the two holiest days of Islam.

 

In addition to holidays set by the state Education Department – Christmas being the only religious holiday among them – the city Department of Education currently closes schools for Good Friday, Easter, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, and Passover.

 

Last March, the coalition published a report that included an estimate of the number of Muslims living in New York City, based on research done by the Muslims in NYC Project of Columbia University. According to the report, more than 600,000 Muslims live in the city, including 100,000 children, a number that represents 12 percent of the school population.

 

According to Muslim belief, Ramadan ends when a new moon is sighted, signaling Eid al-Fitr should be celebrated the next day. The divergence among Muslims in the U.S. is whether to celebrate once the moon has been spotted in a Muslim country, or to wait until it has been seen in North America.

 

“Traditionally, ethnic mosques do not follow the North American authority,” said Azeem Khan, assistant secretary general of Islamic Circle of North America, based in Queens. “They will follow Saudi Arabia, which is the Muslim holy land or their home country”.

 

In New York, three in four Muslims are immigrants, according to the coalition’s report. Mosques have blossomed in the West Bronx as a result of growing immigration from West Africa to the neighborhoods of Highbridge, Mount Hope, and Morris Heights.

 

In the past, Khan explained, the various leaders of American Muslim organizations would have a conference call on the estimated night of the moon sighting, and question witnesses who claimed to have seen the moon to assess whether was true. The new moon is a very thin sliver than can be very difficult to see with even the slightest overcast or pollution, so designated moon sighters often drove up a hill to get a better view.

 

But for the first time last year, the Islamic Society of North America used astronomical calculations to work out precisely whether a new moon would exist and have thus set the dates for Muslim holidays for the next five years. According to its calculation, Eid al-Fitr was on Saturday.

 

“The prophet was just providing a solution to the illiteracy problem of the community at the time,” Imam Omar Abu-Namous, from the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, explained about the moon sighting method. “But in the 21st century, we are literate, we have calculators, computer.”

 

But this scientific method is highly contested by many, and immigrants continue to go by moon sightings in their home countries. “For the foreseeable future, we must stick to the sighting methodology, there is no other solution,” lamented Abu-Namous, despite favoring the scientific method. “Uniformity is close to impossible.”

 

This could prove quite problematic for the Coalition for Muslim School Holidays. Because the day depends on the sighting of the moon, families and authorities are not aware that the next day will be Eid al-Fitr until the night before, which would make it impossible for the school district to plan on closing schools for Eid al-Fitr ahead of time.

 

Louis F. Cristillo, principal investigator for the Muslims in NYC Project of Columbia University, suggested one solution would be for each school district to choose the date, or to appeal to local Muslim leadership to choose a fixed date, through consultation.

 

Bakary Camara, a spokesman for the Islamic Cultural Center of the Bronx and the father of five who lives in Highbridge, did not foresee this being a problem. “You always have a group outside the majority who do things differently,” he said, citing Orthodox Christians as an example, who celebrate Christian holidays 12 days after the norm. “It’s totally doable.”