SECOND EDITORIAL: Eid: day of disunity?

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\10\28\story_28-10-2006_pg3_1

This year, too, Pakistan had two or three different Eids because different groups of pious mullahs couldn’t “see” the moon. In effect, this meant that some of the celebrants became children of Satan because they fasted on the day of sacred festivity.

Muslims were enjoined unity but they use religion to express disunity. They say Islam is a religion of unity but in actual practice it is nothing but violent disunity. Through the sacred Ramazan month, Muslims were killing Muslims in Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan. So the world now thinks that Muslims are inclined to kill one another with particular vengeance on their sacred days — Iraqi Muslims have killed fellow Iraqis most during the fasting month this year. Two years ago our depressed-looking Barelvi cleric Mufti Munibur Rehman was roughed up by tough Pushtun Deobandi clerics inside the Ruet-e-Hilal Committee. The scene was most chastening, clerics delivering blows to each other. This year many people died in a clash between two tribal groups over Eid in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

But sectarian violence earlier at Nishtar Park nearly got rid of Mufti Sahib. If that had happened, the moon-sighting committee would have completely gone Deobandi. Then we might have had one Eid with the moon sighted in some obscure corner of the Tribal Areas, most probably Bajaur. Then at least the violent Deobandi clerics who would have bullied us into one Eid wouldn’t have looked as depressed and grief-stricken as Mufti Munib does on the eve of every Eid. Maybe he is afraid of what could transpire on Eid: an attack by a suicide-bomber trained by the jihadis that all Muslims love, deluded into thinking they will go to Heaven by killing Americans or Hindus or Jews.

Muslims should do something about timing Eid every year. An OIC summit could be held in which heads of state, accompanied by all their clerical personalities of note, should decide on a pan-Islamic level on a calendar of Eid based on scientific calculation. Eid should not be used to express disunity; it should be an expression of oneness of Muslims in front of the Oneness of God. *