On Eids and Exams

Ramadan will be ending this week, but nobody knows when exactly.

As I understand it, because the Islamic calendar is based on the moon rather than the sun (as in the Gregorian calendar), the beginning of new months is tied to when the new moon occurs. Religious (and national) leaders observe the moon and it is not until they physically recognize the new moon that they will acknowledge the end of one month and beginning of the next. Thus, we wait with the awareness that the Eid (celebration for the end of Ramadan) will take place on Thursday or Friday, but we won’t know exactly until the night before. (Side note: There are some interesting ways in which the date of the new moon has been contested by some Muslims for political reasons. Rather than recognizing the Eid date announced for a particular country [not all countries observe the Eid on the same day], some people may opt to recognize the date for the Eid that was not selected in order to express opposition to the political and/or religious leadership.)

I’m afraid I don’t know a whole lot on this interesting issue, but from my perspective as a student during Ramadan, the uncertainty of the date for the Eid has led to some interesting moments of confusion as our program draws to a close and we schedule our final events: exams, due dates for term projects, quizzes, when we’ll be holding class and when we’ll have the day off, and so on. Coming from a culture in which work and school events tend to be planned out fairly strictly and far in advance, this uncertainly can be a headache; students expect a syllabus outlining due dates for assignments while teachers cannot provide them with any certainty.

Rather than getting too frustrated with this difference, however, I actually find the uncertainty somewhat refreshing. It reminds me of the oft-heard phrase insha’ Allah (“if God wills it”), which is often said to express the English idea of “hopefully” but also to punctuate comments made by others about their hopes or plans. For example, I might say “I’d like to go Fez this weekend” and a friend or family member might tag “insha’ Allah” on to the end of it. It’s often appropriate for me to then affirm the sentiment and reply with “insha’ Allah.” Whereas it seems to me that it’s more common among Americans for the original speaker (e.g., me) to say “hopefully” when talking about the future, in Morocco there is more verbal feedback from others involved in the conversation. (This back-and-forth relationship is reflected in music too, as call-and-response passages are a common formal component of most Moroccan musics.)

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