PRAYER TIMINGS Effective 08/22 MCA NOOR Fajr 5:40 5:50 Dhuhr 1:30 1:30 Asr 5:15 6:15 Maghrib Sunset Sunset Isha 9:20 9:20 Juma 1 1:30 1:30 Juma 2 2:00 2:00 Newsletter Juma 3 2:30 2:30 Published Weekly by the Muslim Community Association of San Francisco Bay Area www.mcabayarea.org Moharram 2, 1442 AH Friday, Aug 21, 2020 Zahir Mosque – Kedah, Malaysia AL-QURAN Do you not see that Allah has subjected to you whatever is on the earth and the ships which run through the sea For questions please email [email protected]. by His command? And He restrains the sky from falling upon the earth, unless by His permission. Indeed Allah, to the people, is Kind and Merciful. Happy Islamic New Year !! Quran 22:65 HADITH Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him) as saying: You would find people like those of mine, the good amongst you in the Days of Ignorance would be good amongst you in the days of Islam, provided they have an understanding of it and you will find good amongst people the persons who would be averse to position of authority until it is thrust upon them, and you will find the worst amongst persons one who has double face. He comes with one face to them and with the other face to the others. Sahih Muslim, Book 44, Hadith 283 1442 Hijri (2020-2021) MCA Elections Announcement NOMINATION DEADLINE: due at [email protected] by 10pm, Tuesday, August 18th July 29, 2020 Assalamu-Alaikum Dear MCA Member, InshaAllah, the MCA Elections for 1442H will be held on Sep 11-13, 2020. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting county regulations, the procedure for this year’s elections, including absentee ballots, is still being determined. Please stay tuned for updates. We invite you to participate in the democracy of the MCA by nominating candidates for open positions and by voting. OPEN POSITIONS: 4 Executive Board (EB), including President, and 2 Board of Trustees Positions: The following Executive Board (EB) members are ending their 2-year terms this year: - Fouad Khatib (President) - Wael Ashmawy - Naeem Ansari - Raziuddin Mohammed The following Board of Trustees (BoT) members are ending their 3-year terms this year: - Abdur Rahman - Junaid Shaikh ELIGIBILITY FOR CANDIDACY: 1. President: Must have been a member 3 years out of the last 5 years in addition to current year membership. 2. Executive Board (EB): Must have been a member 2 years out of the last 5 years in addition to current year membership. 3. Board of Trustees (BoT): Must have been member for 3 years out of the last 5 years in addition to current year membership. NOMINATIONS: Nomination Deadline: The attached nomination form must be emailed to [email protected] by Tuesday, Aug 18, 2020 at 10PM To be a Nominee, you must have been a member on or before June 18, 2020. To Nominate, you must have been a member on or before June 18, 2020. CANDIDATES FORUM A virtual candidate forum will tentatively be held on Sunday, August 30 2020 from 8:00pm-10:00pm. The date and time is subject to change. Further details will be communicated as soon as possible. ELECTIONS The elections will tentatively be held on Friday September 11, Saturday September 12 & Sunday September 13, 2020. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting county regulations, the procedure for this year’s elections, including absentee ballots, is still being determined. Please stay tuned for updates. VOTING To vote, you must have been a member on or before July 12, 2020. A valid photo ID showing your name and address is required. (Examples are State of California Driver’s license, California ID, Green Card, Passport or any other reasonable photo ID) Please contact MCA General Secretary at [email protected] for membership related questions and concerns. The MCA Election Committee can be reached via email for any questions or concerns: [email protected] May Allah (SWT) make this election process continue to be a source of unity, strength, and harmony among the members of our community, Ameen. The Election Committee Sajid A. Khan (Chair) Altaf Khan Marwa Ahmed Christy Chase Khandaker Azad 2 Post 21. Al-BAASIT your Ad The Extender The Englarger, The One who constricts the sustenance by His wisdom and expands and widens it with His Generosity and online Mercy. mca.inhood.me “And to Allah belong the best names, so invoke Him by them.” [Quran 7:180] 3 The Beginning of Hijri calendar In AD 638, six years after the death of the the fact that the true length of the solar year use, though it is not known to have had an Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s second caliph is not 365 but 365.2422 days. epoch other than memorable local events. Umar recognized the necessity of a calendar In pre-Islamic Arabia, various other systems There were two other reasons Umar rejected to govern the affairs of the Muslims. This was of measuring time had been used. In South existing solar calendars. The Quran, in first of all a practical matter. Correspondence Arabia, some calendars apparently were Chapter 10, Verse 5, states that time should with military and civilian officials in the lunar, while others were lunisolar, using be reckoned by the moon. Not only that, newly conquered lands had to be dated. months based on the phases of the moon calendars used by the Persians, Syrians But Persia used a different calendar from but intercalating days outside the lunar and Egyptians were identified with other Syria, where the caliphate was based; Egypt cycle to synchronize the calendar with the religions and cultures. He therefore decided used yet another. Each of these calendars seasons. On the eve of Islam, the Himyarites to create a calendar specifically for the had a different starting point, or epoch. The appear to have used a calendar based on Muslim community. It would be lunar, and it Sasanids, the ruling dynasty of Persia, used the Julian form, but with an epoch of 110 would have 12 months, each with 29 or 30 June 16, AD 632, the date of the accession BC. In central Arabia, the course of the year days. of the last Sasanid monarch, Yazdagird III. was charted by the position of the stars Syria, which until the Muslim conquest was This gives the lunar year 354 days, 11 days relative to the horizon at sunset or sunrise, part of the Byzantine Empire, used a form of fewer than the solar year. Umar chose as dividing the ecliptic into 28 equal parts the Roman “Julian” calendar, with an epoch the epoch for the new Muslim calendar corresponding to the location of the moon of October 1, 312 BC . Egypt used the Coptic the hijrah, the emigration of the Prophet on each successive night of the month. The calendar, with an epoch of August 29, AD Muhammad and 70 Muslims from Makkah names of the months in that calendar have 284. Although all were solar, and hence to Madinah, where Muslims first attained continued in the Islamic calendar to this geared to the seasons and containing 365 religious and political autonomy. The hijrah day and would seem to indicate that, before days, each also had a different system for thus occurred on 1 Muharram 1 according to Islam, some sort of lunisolar calendar was in periodically adding days to compensate for the Islamic calendar, which was named “hijri” 4 after its epoch. (This date corresponds to July 16, AD 622 on the Gregorian calendar.) Today in the West, it is customary, when writing hijri dates, to use the abbreviation ah, which stands for the Latin anno hegirae, “year of the hijrah.” Because the Islamic lunar calendar is 11 days shorter than the solar, itis therefore not synchronized to the seasons. Its festivals, which fall on the same days of the same lunar months each year, make the round of the seasons every 33 solar years. This 11-day difference between the lunar and the solar year accounts for the difficulty of converting dates from one system to the other. The Gregorian Calendar The early calendar of the Roman Empire was lunisolar, containing 355 days divided into In the Middle Ages, the Christian liturgical spring equinox was falling on March 11 12 months beginning on January 1. To keep calendar was grafted onto the Julian one, rather than where it should, on March 21. it more or less in accord with the actual solar and the computation of lunar festivals Copernicus, Christophorus Clavius and year, a month was added every two years. like Easter, which falls on the first Sunday the physician Aloysius Lilius provided the The system for doing so was complex, and after the first full moon after the spring calculations, and in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII cumulative errors gradually misaligned it equinox, exercised some of the best minds ordered that Thursday, October 4, 1582 with the seasons. By 46 BC , it was some in Christendom. The use of the epoch AD would be followed by Friday, October 15, three months out of alignment, and Julius 1 dates from the sixth century, but did not 1582. Most Catholic countries accepted Caesar oversaw its reform. Consulting Greek become common until the 10th. Because the new “Gregorian” calendar, but it was astronomers in Alexandria, he created a the zero had not yet reached the West from not adopted in England and the Americas solar calendar in which one day was added Islamic lands, a year was lost between 1 BC until the 18th century.