Here we go again. It’s that time of year when Malawian Muslims dust off the same tired arguments, polish their digital weapons, and prepare for another round of the moon-sighting wars. Like clockwork, every few months, our WhatsApp groups transform from spaces of Islamic brotherhood into battlefields of religious superiority.
The script never changes. Only the dates do. Whether it’s Ramadan’s end or Eid al-Adha’s beginning, the same predictable drama unfolds with the precision of a Swiss watch. “Follow Saudi Arafa on Thursday!” declares one camp. “Follow the local sighting – Friday is our Eid!” fires back the other. “One Arafa, One Ummah!” preaches a third, immediately followed by “Stop this colonial mentality!” The digital knives are out, and community unity bleeds to death one angry emoji at a time.
This isn’t journalism – it’s observable reality playing out on our phones every few months with depressing regularity. The same communities that united online during COVID-19 lockdowns, sharing prayers and support, now fracture into warring factions over lunar calendars with the reliability of seasonal rains. The irony would be comedic if it weren’t so destructive, and if we hadn’t seen this exact movie played out dozens of times before.
What makes this recurring nightmare particularly galling is how quickly these digital arguments escalate beyond theology into personal attacks – the same personal attacks, using the same inflammatory language, targeting the same fault lines that split us last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. We’ve perfected the art of communal self-destruction and turned it into a biannual tradition.
The real casualties aren’t the theological positions – it’s the community bonds that get weaker with each repetition. Every divided Eid becomes practice for the next one. Families create separate WhatsApp groups to avoid the same arguments they had six months ago. Friends unfriend each other over moon-sighting posts with the same content they shared last year. Islamic organizations lose members not over doctrine, but over the same digital drama that plays out like a broken record.
We’re watching the slow-motion disintegration of Muslim community in Malawi, and we’re doing it voluntarily, repeatedly, predictably. The children absorbing these cyclical digital fights are learning that religious difference means perpetual conflict, that community bonds are expendable, and that this destructive pattern is just “how things are done.”
Meanwhile, the substantive conversations that should be happening – about community welfare, charitable giving, spiritual preparation for Eid – get drowned out by the familiar noise of our self-imposed chaos. We’ve become so skilled at fighting each other over the same issues that we’ve forgotten how to talk about anything else.
Other communities have recognized this destructive dynamic and broken free from it. They’ve created unified systems, learned from their mistakes, and prioritized community harmony over individual interpretation. They understood that some battles aren’t worth fighting repeatedly, especially when the only guaranteed outcome is mutual destruction.
The solution isn’t complicated – it’s the same solution we’ve ignored through dozens of previous cycles. It means religious leaders taking responsibility for ending this recurring nightmare instead of perpetuating it. It means community members choosing not to participate in the same destructive patterns every few months. It means recognizing that we’ve had this exact argument before, and it didn’t end well then either.
As we approach yet another divided Eid celebration – the same division we’ve orchestrated countless times before – perhaps the question isn’t who benefits from this chaos, but what we lose. Every divided Eid costs us trust, weakens our institutions, and teaches our children that being right matters more than being together. The beneficiary isn’t any individual or group – it’s dysfunction itself.
The technology in our pockets was supposed to help us build the modern ummah. Instead, we’re using it to perfect the destruction of the ancient one. That may be the real sacrifice this Eid – not the animals we’re debating when to slaughter, but the community bonds we’re systematically destroying, one predictable argument at a time.
