Eid celebrations on different days were not only confined to India. Even in neighbouring Pakistan, the festival was celebrated on three different days — people in most areas of the NWFP celebrated it on Monday, those living in Upper and Lower Dir on Tuesday and the rest of the country on Wednesday.

Calling it “deplorable”, Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has decided to call a meeting soon to ensure one Eid in the future.

After calling on President General Parvez Musharraf to exchange greetings on Wednesday, Aziz told him that he would soon convene a meeting to discuss the issue, reported the Urdu daily Jang.

“Divided We Celebrate”, ran the headline of the English daily Dawn on Tuesday, while the headline in the Daily News read “Eid was yesterday, is today and will be tomorrow”.

Most of the Islamic world was divided over the day of celebration with Saudi Arabia, UAE, other Gulf countries, Tunis, Libya, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan and Mauritania celebrating it on Monday and Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Morocco, Algeria and Oman on Tuesday. In India, Kerala observed Eid on Monday, Delhi on Tuesday and major part of J-K on Wednesday.

Holding the orthodox methods of moon sighting responsible for this divide, Wednesday’s editorial of the Dawn calls for the use of astronomical methods to calculate the appearance of the new moon.

There is a school of thought, which bats for the use of scientific methods to fix the day of Eid while the orthodox followers oppose such a move and say scientific calculation cannot be relied upon, citing Shariyat.