Others, however, held that the fast does not become binding and that every region is to rely on its own local sighting. This was the position of al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad, Sālim ibn ʿAbd Allāh, and Isḥāq.

Kuraib reported: “I travelled to Syria, and the new moon of Ramaḍān was sighted there on the night of Friday. Later, when I returned to Madinah at the end of the month, Ibn ʿAbbās questioned me. During the conversation he asked about the crescent and said, ‘When did you see the new moon?’ I informed him. He replied, ‘We, however, saw it on the night of Saturday, and we shall continue to fast until we complete thirty days or see the crescent (of Shawwāl).’ I said, ‘Will you not accept Muʿāwiyah’s sighting and his fast?’ He answered, ‘No. That is how the Messenger of Allah ﷺ commanded us.’” Muslim narrated the report.

Imām al-Shāfiʿī, in the view most widely attributed to him, offered a middle path: if the horizons differ, each community follows its own horizon; but if the horizons coincide, they are bound by a single ruling for beginning and ending the fast. This was also the choice of Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah. Shaykh Muḥammad ibn al-Wahhab ibn al-Marākishī, in his work al-ʿAdhb al-Zalāl fī Mabāḥith Ru’yat al-Hilāl, stated that if the distance between two locations is less than 2,226 kilometres, they share a single moon-sighting; if it is greater, they do not.

Lessons drawn from the ḥadith:

1. The obligation to fast Ramaḍān is contingent upon people—whether all of them or some—actually sighting the crescent. Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd rejected tying the ruling to the calculations of astronomers, and al-Ṣanʿānī pointed out that, were the matter left to such calculations, only a few specialists would know the result, whereas the Sacred Law is built upon what is accessible to the masses.
2. The same contingency applies to ending the fast; the beginning of Shawwāl likewise depends on the sighting.
3. If the crescent is not seen, people must not begin the fast until they complete thirty days of Shaʿbān, nor may they break the fast until they complete thirty days of Ramaḍān.
4. When the sky is overcast or dusty, they are to count Shaʿbān as a full thirty days. Al-Ṣanʿānī noted that the majority of jurists and hadith scholars understand the Prophet’s words “fa-qdurū lahu” (“calculate for it”) to mean completing Shaʿbān as thirty days, as another narration makes explicit.
5. It is therefore obligatory to fast on the thirtieth day of Shaʿbān when the moon is obscured by cloud and the like.