I understood the lunar-sighting bit, and the reason that when I looked it up last week the web sites I found said, "Ramadan is predicted to start on...", but as of the time I edited my quotes-file, I was still confused as to when it had actually started here (if there's a single authority for U.S. Muslims to listen to ... if there's more than one and they disagree, then I guess I'll have to remain as confused as the man with two wristwatches).
What I don't understand yet is how one schedules appointments beyond the end of the current month in that calendar. I don't recall seeing that addressed on the calendar web sites I've read so far, and I keep forgetting to ask.
Yeah, I read in the Sunday paper that Saudi Arabia and others declared that Ramadan will start on Sunday, and Egypt declared it will start on Monday. I'm equally confused by that; according to the rules I read, I don't see how they can say in advance when it will start.
As to the future months, I'm not sure that the start of calendar months in general depends on sighting the new moon, or just the beginning and end of the Ramadan fast. (Some of the quotes from the texts I saw indicated, not surprisingly, that they well understood that the next moon would come 29-30 days after the previous one, and for non-holy months, the sighting of the moon functioned more as a resynchronizing mechanism. But I'm not at all sure about that.)
Re: Ramadan
What I don't understand yet is how one schedules appointments beyond the end of the current month in that calendar. I don't recall seeing that addressed on the calendar web sites I've read so far, and I keep forgetting to ask.
Re: Ramadan
As to the future months, I'm not sure that the start of calendar months in general depends on sighting the new moon, or just the beginning and end of the Ramadan fast. (Some of the quotes from the texts I saw indicated, not surprisingly, that they well understood that the next moon would come 29-30 days after the previous one, and for non-holy months, the sighting of the moon functioned more as a resynchronizing mechanism. But I'm not at all sure about that.)