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Chaos of Islamic Dates 

Dr. S. Kamal Abdali (USA) and Dr. Ilyas (Malaysia) did pioneering work. Dates of any calendar should be "uniform" all over the globe. Dr. Ilyas proposed “tri-zonal” and “bi-zonal” Islamic calendars. Both make no sense. Muslim experts do not fully comprehend the basics of calendar-making. Complications include (but not limited to):

1. Earliest Lunar visibility, especially for areas beyond 50 degrees North/South latitudes

2. Seasonal lunar movement from as far north as Alaska and as far south as New Zealand

3. Local atmospheric conditions

4. Dateline (Makkah cannot be dateline, as areas east of it will always be one day behind)

5. Fixed length of 29/30 days for the Islamic month (not 27 ½ to 29 ½ astronomical months)

At present, the Muslims don't agree or follow one criterion for fixing their Islamic calendars. Various Muslim countries and Muslim organizations use different criteria for fixing their first date of an Islamic month.  

In N. America Muslim dates are fixed by: 

1. ISNA (Saudi):  Moon sets after sunset in Makka on the conjunction date.

2. Shariah Board: Caribbean sighting valid for N. America.  (TorontoBuffalo Hilal Com. also follows it)

3. CFCO Intl: Sighted Hilal in 48 contiguous US states for all of the US and Canada

4. Council of Masajid (Connecticut): Only locally (CT) seen Hilal is the Sunnah.

5. Fiqhi positions (Sunni: Ittihad al-Matal’i,, Sharing the same night, seen in East, Shi’a/Ithna Asahari , etc)

Other variations are:

6. Hilal-Sighting Committees and local Imams follow their own criterion

7. Libya goes by the Day of the New Moon.

8. Turkey (Bosnia, and European Councils):  lunar angle of … degrees at sunset.

9. Indonesia (Malaysia and Brunei also) lunar angle/altitude at sunset.

10. UK Ulema: “Confirmed Seen moon from the EAST.”

Only Brunei, India, Pakistan, Oman, South Africa, etc. still go by the Hilal (sighted moon).  

CFCO’s proposed (1986) solution was based on: 1) Calculated Hilal and 2) International dateline (180E longitude) 

It assumes "lunar visibility" at sunset on the conjunction date around the Intl dateline. When religious, political, and calendar-making experts converge and adopt basic rules only then these dates may be implement.