Daylight Savings Causes Eid Chaos
Written by: Hamzah Moin MELBOURNE - Thousands of Muslims prayed Eid an hour too early this year when Eid ul-Adha fell on the day of Daylight Savings Time change. Typically everyone change their clocks an hour back to accommodate the longer daylight hours but many Muslims neglected this practice due to all the Eid excitement.
“I think this whole changing the clocks thing has gone too far.” explained Imam Waris Khatib, who was one of the many Muslims who forgot to change their clocks the night before. “I think the enemies of Islam have schemed this up for awhile… hoping to ruin our blessed day of Eid.”
Masjid Al-Ansar, the mosque Imam Waris leads at, had to cancel their Eid prayers. “I showed up an hour early and thought nobody was showing up or worse, they went to the other mosque down the street.” Angry and bitter, Imam Waris went home and returned all the gifts he bought for the masjid’s youth.
Imam Waris was even more disheartened to know that the convenience store had a ‘no refund’ policy on all the bubblegum he had bought for the children of the community. He became livid to learn that the thousands of pieces of bubblegum contained gelatin and blamed the American government for all the disarray.
The rest of Imam Waris’ congregation showed up at the correct time an hour later, but without any imam they too were left in a state of confusion. “We passed the mic around doing the ‘Allahuakbar, Allahuabkar’ thing but realized after a couple of hours that the Imam was missing.” said a masjid congregant who wishes to remain anonymous. “Some guy got up and made an impromptu khutbah about loving goats and cows and that’s when I knew that our community becomes really, really stupid without a leader.”
On the flip side, some other mosque patrons felt that Daylight Savings actually helped their usual tardiness on Eid. “I usually spend most of my Eid mornings on my driveway honking my horn for an hour yelling at my wife and daughters to hurry up” said Nabeel Syed, who also forgot to set his clock last night. “Accidentally leaving an hour early made us right on time for once.”
Imam Waris however, is taking revenge against the government for setting Daylight Savings the night before Eid. He feels it was done purposely to cause discord between Muslims. “I will not be observing the leap year” said Imam Waris, referring to February 29 which comes every four years to align the Gregorian calendar with the seasonal year. “February 29th will come and go and my masjid will not have any part of it.”
Imam Waris is encouraging other congregants not to partake in the leap year to send a message to the government. “We will show them that you can’t set Daylight Savings before our blessed day and get away with it. If your boss asks ‘Why didn’t you hand in the report yesterday?’ you should respond with ‘Yesterday was March 1st. Nothing was due on that day.’”
Most of the congregants ignored Imam Waris’ February 29th boycott and have now started going to the other mosque down the street.
