yesterday after our prayers i looked out the window hoping to catch a glimpse of this.
and to my amusement, so many other heads were popping out of windows. alas, the moon's eclipse path did not pass by our skies.
i told aby how amazing it is that such a phenomenon can happen under God's grace. at precisely the same time, all around the world people are looking at exactly the same thing. we mere humans can never dream of replicating such an occurrence.
then aby reminded me that such signs warn of the impending akhir zaman – the end of time. in skolah ugama when i was younger, ustazahs always used to warn that Rasullulah feared for his ummah, as the time between then and the end of time was this short (separate your thumb and index finger about one inch). that was why he led solat gerhana mata hari/bulan when these occurrences happened, praying for God to protect us from the coming of the dajjal.
just think, in just this lifetime alone, how many solar/lunar eclipses have there been? the one that happened yesterday was the second this year; the first one was in march. for the past ten years, the earth saw an average of 2.5 lunar eclipses per year. scientists are already predicting the next one to be on 21 feb 2008. for the solar eclipse, which is supposed to be an even more rarer occurrence happened an average of 2.4 times a year.
therefore i concluded that the night of 28 august 2007 is a blessed night indeed. it being nisfu syaaban + eclipse + it was raining very heavily the whole day = one blessed night. so if the end of time was really very near, then yesterday was just another one of the signs.
so what do you do when there are signs that the end of time is near? move into a mosque? quit your job and stay on the sajadah all day all night? start memorizing the holy quran before its text disappear from its pages?
