What is your job again, Sir???

Can you imagine somebody answering that question with:

"I am part of the National Moon Sighting Committee"?

Yes, the Bangladeshi Government has a moon sighting committee! How could you not love that. Their job is to confirm the appearance of the moon to determine the timing of religious festivals such as Eid-ul-Fitr or Eid-ul-Azha

Moon sighting seems quite controversial, but as far as I understand, they have to actually see the moon before they can declare certain religious public holidays. Sometimes the committee members go up in a helicopter to check if they can see the moon! I like the fact that nature has the final say. 

The State Minister for Religious Affairs sometime could also be the chairman of the National Moon Sighting Committee.

 

Here’s a brief news story on the moon sighting committee from the Daily Star:

http://archive.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=242798

Religion in Bangladesh, Part II

Around nine percent of the Bangladeshi population is still Hindu. Hinduism is a vast complex which can be identified through worship and a sense of ethics, or sanctions for actions. The following elements are included:

“reincarnation”: one lived before and will live again; how one is reborn is a result of past births, of what has been.

“karma”: right action. What determines rebirth is one's action: life is a web of what one has done in the past.

“dharma”: duty, obligation (religious). A person is good if he obeys his "dharma". One knows what duty life requires because one is in his life. A person is considered good if he obeys obligations life imposes on him.

“time”: no beginning, no end. The world is an endless process of time.

“order”: universe is an ordered entity in which everything has gone wrong: people have not done their duty. Order must be restored by changing what one does in life -a person can be changed within it, but one can't change the world.

The doctrine of "karma" and the attitude of relativism are expressions of the sense of a religious hierarchy that permeates the Hindu social system and differentiates it from that of Islam.