Celebrating Non-Islamic Festivals - Shaykh Mustafa Abu Rayyan

Khutbah al-Ula — Opening Sermon

Alhamdulillah, we praise Him, ask for His help, and ask His forgiveness. And we seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our souls and from the evil of our deeds. Whom Allah guides, none can misguide him, and whom He misguides, none can guide him.

And I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, alone, with no partner. And I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and His Messenger, and purest of His creation, and His friend. Allah has sent him to all people as a bearer of glad tidings and a warner.

He conveyed the message, fulfilled the trust, and advised the Ummah. And He left us on the white path, its night is like its day — nothing departs from it but is destroyed. May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him and his family and companions, and those who are guided by his guidance, and hold fast to his Sunnah, and call to his call until the Day of Judgment.

O you who have believed, fear Allah as He should be feared, and do not die except while you are Muslims.

O you people, fear your Lord, Who created you from one soul, and created from it its mate, and spread among them many men and women. And fear Allah, whom you ask about, and the wombs. Verily, Allah is ever watching over you.

O you who have believed, fear Allah, and say the right words. He will set right for you your deeds, and forgive you your sins. And whoever obeys Allah and His Messenger has certainly attained a great triumph.

My dear ones, I do not remind you by harming myself, but with the fear of Allah and the counsel of the first and the last. Verily, Allah is with those who fear Him, and those who are doers of good.

The Importance of Seeking Knowledge

My brothers and sisters, I start by praising Allah Almighty, and sending blessings and salutations upon our beloved Messenger Muhammad ﷺ. Ikhwanifillah, it's extremely important that we as Muslims educate ourselves with regards to our religion — the rights and the wrongs, the do's and the don'ts — and to understand why certain things are allowed and others are haram. It's extremely important that we educate ourselves with regards to the matters of our religion. The Prophet ﷺ said:

Seeking knowledge is an obligation upon every Muslim. (Sunan Ibn Mājah, Hadith 224)

And it's extremely important that you know especially the things that sometimes might be a cause of doubt. Something that you're not sure of — you need to educate yourself on it to become sure of it.

Today, inshallah, what I want to speak about — because it's going to be Easter soon, I believe it's Good Friday and then Easter — is the matter of religious holidays and religious festivals. We as Muslims have our own religious festivals, but we also have festivals in general, some that are secular. What is the ruling for us in partaking in those festivals? Are we allowed to celebrate things like Christmas and Easter and Valentine's Day? And what about festivals that have nothing to do with religion? Let's say there is a day of independence, or like in some places they have national days. What about those? So it's extremely important that you know what Islam says about this, what our scholars said about this, what the Prophet ﷺ said about this. These things are nothing new — they existed during the time of the Prophet ﷺ.

What is 'Eid'?

Now inshallah, the first thing we have to understand is when we want to understand a term — we call it Eid. What does Eid mean? We have two Eids: Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. Ramadan is near, and I hope that we reach Ramadan healthy and sound and in a state of Iman so that we can benefit from it. And after Ramadan we will have our Eid, Eid al-Fitr. And then you have Eid al-Adha. These two Eids are from our religion — they are ours.

The Prophet ﷺ used to emphasize that quite often. He used to say, "This is our Eid." And that was emphasized when Abu Bakr rebuked some people who were playing, and the Prophet ﷺ said, "Leave them, Abu Bakr — this is our Eid." There was a special emphasis that we give importance — more importance than any other day — to our Eids. And one of the problems that we see with our children is that sometimes they will regard other celebrations as a bigger deal than the Eid, and this is something that we have to remedy.

The day of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha should be the day your children look forward to the most. It should be something that everyone knows — this is our day. And we are highly encouraged to celebrate and to show our happiness that we, alhamdulillah, finished Ramadan, hoping that Allah accepts our worship. Similarly with Eid al-Adha — Hajj is finished and we ask Allah to accept our Hajj, or the Hajj of those who went, and for Allah to forgive us and to shower us with His blessings. This is the believer's way.

The Meaning of 'Eid' — A Recurring Occasion

But we live in a globalized world. We come into contact with other people, other cultures, and they have their own celebrations and their own festivals — many of them religious. What do you do with those?

Ikhwanifillah, what you have to understand first and foremost is that the word Eid means something that is recurring. It comes from عَوْد — it is something that comes over and over again. It is a recurring thing. This is why our two Eids — are they not recurring? Yes, they happen every year. This is what it means.

The Hadith of Buwana

The Prophet ﷺ addressed these types of occasions in a well-known hadith. A companion came to the Prophet ﷺ and said, "Ya Rasulullah, I made an oath to Allah that I will sacrifice a camel in Buwana." Buwana was a place — some scholars say it was a place where there were many poor people — and he had made an oath that he was going to sacrifice a camel and distribute the meat. The Prophet ﷺ said:

"Was there in Buwana — in this place where you want to sacrifice a camel and you made that oath to Allah — was there an idol that they used to worship before?" Now during this time there was no idol, but the Prophet ﷺ was asking: did there used to be one? The companion said: لَا يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ — "No, there wasn't." Then the Prophet ﷺ said:

(Sunan Abī Dāwūd, Hadith 3313)

"Was there an Eid from amongst the Eids of the Jahiliyyah, the Eids of the idol worshippers? Did they have a festival that they used to hold there? Was there a tradition that they used to gather there and observe?" The companion said, "No." Then the Prophet ﷺ said, "In that case, fulfill your vow. You can go and slaughter the camel."

But what if he had said yes? The Prophet ﷺ said:

(Sunan Abī Dāwūd, Hadith 3313)

"There is no fulfilling of a vow that involves a sin." Meaning what? To go to a place where a festival used to happen, to go to a place where they used to worship other than Allah — and then you go and slaughter a camel — it is almost as if you are reviving that tradition, giving importance to that place where they used to worship other than Allah. And that is something we are not allowed to do.

The Prophet ﷺ is saying: even to sacrifice a camel and distribute the meat to the people — which is an act of worship to Allah, something good — to do it in a place where there once was a festival held, is wrong. This is how far we should remove ourselves from anything that has to do with idol worship, shirk, and disbelief. Be far away from it.

Religious Festivals — Staying Away Entirely

What about the one who wants to partake in such festivals? What about the one who wants to revive them? What about the one who likes them? This is the case, ikhwani, with regards to festivals that are religious in nature — whether they are pagan or Christian, it doesn't matter. If they are religious in nature, we stay away from them, because the only religion we accept, uphold, and act upon is the religion of Islam.

So the moment you find out that Valentine's Day has pagan roots — you're done with it. No. The moment you find out that Christmas is about deifying Isa ﷺ — no. Done. We're not going to partake in it.

Similarly with Easter — celebrating the supposed resurrection of Isa ﷺ. Do we believe he was resurrected? Of course not. He wasn't even killed. As Allah said in Surah An-Nisa:

They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but it was made to appear like that to them. So when it comes to religious festivals, what do we say? We don't partake in them. The Prophet ﷺ prohibited it. We have Isa ﷺ in our own faith, in our own religion, and Allah gave us two better ones — our two Eids. And we should give importance to those. This is how we should act with regards to religious festivals that are not from Islam.

Secular and Cultural Festivals

طيب — What if they are not religious? What if they are secular festivals? What if a festival has no religious connotations at all? What do you do then?

When the Prophet ﷺ came to Medina — we know he migrated from Mecca — and when he came to the Ansar, those who accepted Islam, those who gave him the city and welcomed him to Medina when the Meccans were persecuting the believers, the Prophet ﷺ saw them getting ready for a celebration. He saw them preparing for a communal festival, and he asked them:

(Sunan Abī Dāwūd, Hadith 1134; Sunan al-Nasā'ī, Hadith 1556)

"What is this day about?" And they said, "This is a day that we used to have as a festival, and we used to come out" — and they described it. They had a cultural festival. The Prophet ﷺ said to them: "Allah has replaced those with two better days" — referring to the two Eids.

So what did the Prophet ﷺ abolish here? He abolished their own cultural festival and said, "No — now you're Muslims. Now you have the two Eids." Did they argue back? "Ya Rasulallah, this is our culture. Can we have both? What's wrong with them?" No — they heard and they obeyed. And this is what we should do as well.

Festivals as Acts of Worship

This is where the scholars derive a very important rule. The Prophet ﷺ saying to the Ansar, "Do away with your cultural festivals, because now you have Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr" — this shows us that the matter of festivals, the matter of Eids, is not merely a cultural thing. It is a religious thing. This is why our scholars derived a rule:

Or as some scholars put it:

Eids are acts of worship for us. Communal festivals in which we gather — to us, as Muslims — are an act of worship. Can we innovate new acts of worship? We cannot. Can we have a third Eid? We cannot. A day where we come together and celebrate as a community and make it a recurring tradition — remember, it must be recurring — falls into the realm of worship, not culture, because the Prophet ﷺ said so. And the Prophet ﷺ did not celebrate anything else.

This is why when someone brings us a festival that is non-religious, we ask: is it recurring? If it ticks that box — is it from Islam? No, it isn't. Because for us, we only come together in celebration for these two Eids.

Now, is that limiting? Of course it's not limiting. You can give your children gifts whenever you want. Have events and gatherings — the problem is when something recurs every year as a community celebration. Imagine we decided here in Birmingham, as a community, that we're going to have a third Eid — a third festival — every year on the 4th of March: a huge festival, all the mosques come together, we make a massive deal of it. Wouldn't that look like an Eid? Why are we doing this? And someone says, "No, we just want to have fun." But what you are doing is placing that day on the same level as the two Eids, and we don't want to do that.

This is why we avoid these things. Allah gave us Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. We celebrate those. This is our day. Teach that to your children. Make it a part of your life. The day you look forward to, the day you mark in your calendar more so than any other day — let it be these two Eids. We want our children to be saying, "Is it Eid yet?" Rather than anything else. It's important that we understand this.

I say this and ask Allah to forgive me and you and all Muslims. Indeed, He is the Forgiving, the Merciful.

Khutbah al-Thaniyah — Second Sermon

Praise be to Allah and peace be upon His Messenger. Brothers in Allah, what we just understood is that the concept of Eid for Muslims is quite different — that the Prophet ﷺ taught us first and foremost that we have only two Eids, and that is what we sanctify and celebrate as a community, and nothing else should compare to them or come near them.

We understood how the Prophet ﷺ taught the Ansar — although they had their own cultural festival, he said Allah has given you two better days. We also spoke about the concept that if festivals have religious connotations, we should stay away from them for two reasons.

One — because we are not supposed to partake in, celebrate, or engage in anything that is non-Islamic. We cannot be seen celebrating the deification of Jesus, nor can we be celebrating his supposed resurrection. We don't even believe in that. That is kufr and disbelief. It goes against our religion. So we shouldn't be celebrating that.

And it goes the same for Halloween, which is a pagan festival rooted in devil worship. We cannot be seen near that. We cannot be celebrating that.

Then we talked about festivals that are cultural or secular, and we said we shouldn't partake in those either. This is why many scholars have said the concept of Independence Day, for example — a country celebrating its Independence Day and making it as big a deal as the actual Eid — is incorrect. And they say: if this were allowed, why did the Prophet ﷺ not celebrate the conquest of Mecca? Was there a greater Independence Day than that — when the Muslims were emancipated from the worship of idols and they began worshipping Allah and Mecca became Dar al-Islam again? Did the Prophet ﷺ make that a celebrated day? Did he commemorate it? No, he didn't.

The Hadith: Whoever Imitates a People

So, ikhwanifillah, this is what we should do. And always remember the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ:

Whoever imitates a people is one of them. (Sunan Abī Dāwūd, Hadith 4031)

This hadith is used — and rightly so — to warn us against imitating other faiths when we are Muslims. You shouldn't do this. Because the Prophet ﷺ is saying: whoever you imitate, you will be with them, you will be resurrected with them. So you don't want to do that.

But we shouldn't only look at this hadith as a negative thing. Because the Prophet ﷺ said whoever imitates a people will be among them — so we should also try and imitate the Prophet ﷺ, the companions, and the righteous and pious people. This is what you should do. This is what you should strive towards. So don't look at this hadith — whenever you hear "whoever imitates a people, he is among them" — and think, "Okay, I know this imam is again talking about don't imitate the disbelievers." No — imitate the believers. Imitate the Prophets. Imitate the righteous people. This is what you should do.

A Warning from the Prophet ﷺ

And the Prophet ﷺ warned us of falling into the same mistakes as the people who came before us — the People of the Book, the Jews and the Christians. He said:

You will surely follow the ways of those who came before you, step by step. (Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 7320; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 2669)

And this was said as a warning. We've seen this play out. Do you think that Valentine's Day was always a Christian tradition? No — it was actually a pagan thing that they adopted. And now we have Muslims saying, "You know what, let's just do it." The Prophet ﷺ said you will follow them, just as they followed those before them.

They celebrate the birthday of Jesus ﷺ. "Let's celebrate the birthday of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ — come on, they're doing it, let's do it as well."

You will follow the ways of those that came before you. The Prophet ﷺ was asked, "Ya Rasulullah, who are these people?" And he said:

"Who else?" — meaning the Jews and the Christians. And this is the Prophet ﷺ warning us: don't fall into their mistakes, because the mistakes they fell into led them to going astray and earning the wrath of Allah.

I ask Allah to forgive our sins and to make us of those who follow the Sunnah, to make us of those who follow the Prophet ﷺ, and to make us among those who hear and obey.