A Strange New Mission...., Going to the moon...theocracy style Options

[tedstryk]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...di_satellite_dc

Apparently they plan to send an Islamic lunar-sighting probe!

[deglr6328]

Sooo....have they heard of moon phase calendars? Last I heard the orbit of the moon was constrained to sub-meter accuracy. Sigh, what happened to you muslim world? You used to be the world leader in astronomy, chemistry, physics.... I guess that's what rampant religious fundamentalism does to science and rational inquiry. sad, really.

[Phil Stooke]

Sooo....have they heard of moon phase calendars? Last I heard the orbit of the moon was constrained to sub-meter accuracy.   Sigh, what happened to you muslim world? You used to be the world leader in astronomy, chemistry, physics.... I guess that's what rampant religious fundamentalism does to science and rational inquiry. sad, really.

Yup, that's how religion works... if the book says you have to *see* it, you can't just go look in some calendar. Especially if you mix religion and paranoia - the calendar was undoubtedly published by infidels and might be a hideous lie. It's just like the food rules, the clothing rules - locked in for ever.

(signed) a proud infidel

(AKA Phil)

[ilbasso]

I was an expat in Saudi Arabia in the early-mid 1980's. The holy month of Ramadan began a day earlier one year than it was supposed to (I think that was 1984). A cleric claimed he saw the new moon - a day earlier than it should have been visible according to the almanacs, and in fact several hours *before* astronomical new moon occurred.

So, we expats woke up one morning to find out that the fasting and other changes (like different office hours) had begun a day before everyone was prepared for them. I assume that the faithful who had gone to the mosques for the pre-dawn prayers got the word early, so they had a chance to gorge before sun-up and the day of fasting began.