It is the Hari Raya [Aidil Fitri] so I took time out to enjoy the festival and did not have the time to blog...The good news is that this year the date of the Aidil Fitri was announced two days before the actual day....In the previous years they had to wait for those traditionalists to watch the sighting of the new moon, although it is a well known fact that according to the calculation of the experts that the new moon would start on such a day, but the traditionalists still insist on going to watch for the sighting of the moon. It is actually a waste of time for in the tropic where the sky is always full of clouds formation , it is rather difficult or impossible to see the crescent on the first day of the month...So this year the government under the leadership of the New Prime Minister decided to somewhat do away with the sighting of the moon and announced the date two days ahead...It is a brave move and a good decision on the part of the government, in doing so...It is an indeed a bold step and this make preparing for the Hari Raya..,is made easy, compare to before where the announcement were made late on the eves of the Hari Raya, where it makes its difficult to prepare food for the next day's consumption, and because of this at time cooked foods would go to waste because the day of the Hari Raya were postponed to another day at the last minute...Now with this new decision where the announcement is made two days before...Thing has really change for the good, so it is good bye to the traditionalists thinking....Although this is just a small aspect of the Islamic culture, it is a very important step in the reformation of the thinking of the Moslem leadership...For Islam to progress, there must be reform in the thinking, so that the religion would progress with times... So to me what happen this year is not only a bold and brave step, it is indeed a significant and a historical move in the history of Islam in Malaysia and it augur well for the new thinking of the reformist in Islam...