When members of Dane County’s Muslim community gathered to celebrate the end of Ramadan with Eid al Fitr, the Festival of Fast-Breaking, on Thursday morning, they didn’t know until just hours before that they would be meeting.
That’s because the timing of the annual holiday is determined by the appearance of the slim crescent of a new moon, signaling the start of a new month in the Islamic lunar calendar.
Kemal Karpat, a professor of history at UW-Madison, is quoted.