WORLD CELEBRATES ISLAMIC NEW YEAR

Jakarta, 1 Muharam 1437/14 October 2015 (MINA) – The festival of Muharram has significant religious importance for Muslims, of which the first day is known as the Islamic New Year. Each year, the holiday falls on a different day because as the Islamic calendar is 11 or 12 days shorter than the solar calendar used in Western countries.

Countries follow astronomical calculations to determine future dates of the Islamic calendar, and this year the Islamic year will be 1437 AH. In 2015, that date falls on 13 October.

In Indonesia itself, as the biggest Muslim population country, people mark today as new year based on Islamic calendar, people spent the holiday for vacation with families, colleages, etc. Today Malaysian, and people in Singapore and most of Muslim in Asian countries also celebrate the Islamic news year.

In middeast countries such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Libya, also mark today as first day of Islamic new year, while Palestine is witnessing the new year in clashes against occupation, and Syria in suffer of war, hunger, refugees.

Muharram is one of the four holy months of Islam and unlawful acts, such as fighting and bloodshed, are forbidden. “The Muslim New Year is really celebrated as a cultural holiday, not a particularly religious one,” Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, director of outreach at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia, told the Washington Times.

“In the Islamic calendar, it is also what began ‘hijra,’ ” Abdul-Malik said, “the migration of the prophet and his companions to establish a place where they were free to practice their religion, and practice it with other people who would be free to practice their religion.”(L/R04/R03)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)