Muslims celebrate end of Ramadan

Saudi Arabia announced that the Eid al-Fitr feast marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan began yesterday, in a statement aired on state TV Al-Ekhbariyah.

Religious authorities in Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest shrines, said the new moon had been sighted and that Ramadan ended on Monday.

The Islamic calendar is a lunar one, and most Muslim countries set the beginning of Eid al-Fitr by the sighting of the new moon. Egyptian state TV, quoting Islamic authorities, too declared that Eid al-Fitr would follow on Tuesday.

The United Arab Emirates and Qatar also announced the end of Ramadan.

Meanwhile, Muslims in Russia yesterday crammed into mosques to fete the end of the Ramadan holy month, with thousands unable to fit inside spilling out into the streets and triggering huge traffic jams. Tens of thousands of Muslims gathered in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. Russia’s Muslim citizens – usually estimated at over 20 million people concentrated in the two main cities, Caucasus and Volga region – have been joined in recent years by a huge influx of migrant workers, mostly from ex-Soviet Central Asia.

On the other hand many Indonesians found themselves hungry and confused yesterday after the government declared the Eid al-Fitr festival that ends the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan would not start there for another day.

The government decided late on Monday, after consulting with religious bodies, that the moon was not in the right position for Eid to begin yesterday, as it has done for most Muslims around the world. It is starting in Indonesia today instead.

“It’s a rather chaotic situation. People have had to change their schedules that they had fixed many days in advance,” said Icha Susanto, account manager at a private company in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. Ms Susanto, 31, said she also felt sorry for families and food vendors who were forced to waste food that they had prepared for the first day of the three-day celebrations.

However the country’s second-largest Islamic group, Muhammadiyah, decided to start Eid yesterday, with some astronomers still maintaining that it was correct.