What happened to the trust that if a Muslim brother or sister sighted the moon and take an oath to that effect is sufficient as evidence?
The question is should we blindly accept it. If that is supposed to be so, then why Hadrat Umar asked another Sahabi to go wash his face and then come back to see if he could still see the moon? Sure enough, when he came back he did not see the moon, and no ther person there was able to see the moon on a clear horizon. Why did Imam Abu-Hanifa asked to accept testimony of moonsighting only when a large group of people confirm that? Imam Abu-Yusuf and Imam Muhammad required 50 Muslims from every community to confirm the sighting. Why did Abdullah ibn Abbas, did not accept Hadrat Kuraib’s sighting of Dimash and asked him to fast the 31st day in Medinah, when he had started his Ramadan 31 days ago in Dimashq (Hadith in Subulus-Salam). All this shows that the Sahabah were all cautious to screen out the mistakes made by sincere Muslims who saw something and believed it to be the moon. They all used whatever method was available to them for screening out mistakes. We use the methods available
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