Thanksgiving Q&A: How to Judge an Occasion

Occasion: A transcription of a lecture (questions and answers) delivered on November 23, 2017Source: A transcription of a video lecture by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

O Allah, we ask You for the good of this night, the good of what is in it, and the good of what comes after it, and we seek refuge in You from the evil of this night, the evil of what is in it, and the evil of what comes after it. O Allah, set right for us our religion and our worldly life, prepare for us right guidance in our affairs, and preserve for us our well-being and our security, O Lord of the worlds.

There is no doubt that the matter of Thanksgiving is a topic Muslims care about, and many questions and inquiries have gathered around it, and I see them bewildered about it. So thank you for this concern, and may Allah reward with good everyone who at any time asks: Is this lawful or unlawful? This in itself is an important qualitative shift. For a time passed over the Muslims in this country when they did not distinguish between what is lawful in the Sharia and what is not, nor between a lawful door and an unlawful door. And I hear from some of our brothers who are advanced in years, I ask Allah to bless their lifespans and preserve their well-being, that a year or two would pass over them, and perhaps one of them would not pray the Friday prayer even once during those periods. And many people were involved in various trades, among them alcohol, as appears from his words, and the idea was absent from his mind: the question of whether this is lawful or unlawful was not something there was any kind of thinking about at all. So that we come today to an issue like the issue of Thanksgiving: do we celebrate it or not? I count that an achievement in the life of Muslims and in their ways of thinking, and praise be to Allah, the Most High, for what we have before us.

Three Questions That Come Before the Ruling

When we speak about the topic we speak about it in some detail, as we try to define the terms. So when we say lawful or unlawful, we understand why we say this. For any festival we must understand a set of things, and ask a set of questions about it.

Number one: What is the meaning of the word celebration? And are we celebrating the name or the substance? You have Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, and many other festivals, so are we celebrating the name or the substance?

Number two: The manifestations of celebration that take place on that day. Will we put on goblin costumes and go out into the street to frighten people? Or are we gathered at a table eating a sweet, delicious, pleasant meal, cheap or expensive, I do not know? What matters: what exactly do we do?

Number three: The origin of the occasion. Is its origin satanic, or human, or from the Most Merciful? That is, did this origin come from Allah, glory and exaltation be to Him, as the Prophet ﷺ related that Allah, the Most High, has replaced them for you with something better, and named them Eid al-Fiṭr and Eid al-Aḍḥā?^[1] That is a festival whose origin is from the Most Merciful, glory and exaltation be to Him, on the tongue of the Prophet ﷺ. And other festivals are on the human tongue, their origin human.

And I tried to count the festivals present in America, and we have for example: Martin Luther King Day, Presidents' Day, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Election Day, Columbus Day, Halloween, and Christmas.^[2] All of these are festivals, and they are roughly some sixteen occasions present in America. When you try to classify them you find them of three kinds. Some have a religious origin, so they are celebrated because they are a foundation of the religion for them. Some have as their origin merely personal matters tied to individuals, like Columbus, and Presidents' Day is tied to a particular person who did something on a particular day, and Martin Luther King; even so, behind this name there is a substance. And some are purely social matters, like Thanksgiving. So on the basis of what conception is it celebrated? This is the basic conception behind the idea.

And I say it to spare you, and may Allah reward with good our brothers who came to the ʿIshā' prayer: I know that this cold in itself is a legitimate excuse in the Sharia for praying at home, but I ask Allah to write your steps to the house of Allah, the Most High, in the scales of your good deeds, O Lord of the worlds.

Two Opinions on Celebrating Occasions

On the ruling regarding celebrating occasions in general we have two opinions.

The first opinion says: There is no harm in sharing with society in the social or political or even personal movements it contains, as long as they do not negatively affect changing the courses of society in directions that contradict the foundation of the creed. So as long as I am not taking society in a direction that contradicts the foundation of the creed, I have no problem. Take Valentine's Day for example: when it was made, what was the idea behind it? Is the idea that we love one another and gather on one day? Or that lovers take each two of them together and go to places where one is alone with the other, and teddy bears and red hearts prevail? What is the idea behind the matter? Is society, with this kind of festival, moving in a negative direction or a positive direction? So this is an occasion that may be social, and may be personal, and may be religious, whatever it is, but in what direction does it take society? So this opinion says: There is no harm in sharing with society in the social or political or personal movements it contains, as long as they do not negatively affect the constants of religion and the foundations of the creed.

The second opinion says: No, we stand at a number of festivals that Islam legislated, and there is nothing other than that. So we say to him: What do you mean? He says: We have Eid al-Fiṭr and Eid al-Aḍḥā. So we say: And is there a third? He says: No, for if there were a third, the Prophet ﷺ would have done it. Then he continues: And you speak about social occasions and political occasions and private occasions, and we hold that the Prophet, upon him be blessings and peace, did not celebrate his birthday, and you do not stop celebrating people's birthdays! Then, the Battle of Badr took place in the Prophet's ﷺ life, and is there a social event greater than the Battle of Badr? Even so the Prophet, upon him be blessings and peace, did not celebrate it, and when the Battle of Uḥud came, and when the Battle of the Trench came, and the Battle of Ḥunayn, and at Tabūk, all of this the Prophet, upon him be blessings and peace, did not celebrate as personal celebrations, and did not hold special occasions for it.

And the people who hold this opinion, by the way, do not speak only about the festivals present in America, but about the festivals present everywhere. Any festival, like the festival of the Sixth of October, is, from his point of view, forbidden, O Mawlānā! And it is a day on which Egypt triumphed over Israel, and there were great achievements in it, and we only remind the coming generations by it; yet he says to you: No, all of this is forbidden in his view. So we reply to this talk: Has he forbidden us the whole world? We say to him: Take care, for what you denied, when you said that the Prophet, upon him be blessings and peace, did not celebrate the Battle of Badr, let us begin from here.

Does the Prophet's ﷺ Leaving Something Indicate Prohibition?

If the Prophet, upon him be blessings and peace, had celebrated some matter, then his very act ﷺ would be legislation for those after him, and it would be obligatory upon every Muslim thereafter to celebrate the day of the Battle of Badr. But the Prophet, upon him be blessings and peace, left that. So I have another point, which is a Sharia question I am investigating in more detail: Does the Prophet's, upon him be blessings and peace, leaving of something mean that it is forbidden?

One day someone brought the Prophet, upon him be blessings and peace, something called the ḍabb (the spiny-tailed lizard), and he found it distasteful, meaning he did not eat it. So the Companions thought that merely because he did not eat it, it was forbidden, so he said to them: No, my leaving of a thing does not mean it is prohibited, but it is only that I do not know it and my people do not know it.^[3] So the fact that the Prophet ﷺ leaves doing something does not at all mean that this thing has become forbidden.

Well then, by what do we judge a thing the Prophet, upon him be blessings and peace, did not do? I do not say forbidden because the Prophet did not do it. The Prophet, upon him be blessings and peace, did not drive a car, but rather rode the camel and rode the she-camel and the horse, and did not ride the car ﷺ. And the Prophet, upon him be blessings and peace, did not come from Egypt to America on American Airlines, and did not come from there to here on Lufthansa, he did not know or perceive ﷺ anything of that. And the Prophet, upon him be blessings and peace, did not have what is called astronomical calculation by which we can count the months and days, and he did not have a calendar that tells you: the prayer time is from such-and-such hour, and the time of the iqāmah is at such-and-such hour. Or that was not in his era ﷺ. So does the fact that the Prophet ﷺ left something mean that it is forbidden?

And I was pleased, as I was researching the matter, by a set of verses mentioned by Shaykh al-Ghumārī, may Allah, the Most High, have mercy on him, in a treatise he called «حسن التفهّم والدَّرْك لمسألة الترك» (Ḥusn al-Tafahhum wa'l-Darak li-Mas'alat al-Tark).^[4] He says in it, in a very brief summary: Leaving is not a proof in our Sharia, it requires neither prohibition nor obligation. So whoever seeks prohibition and bar through our Prophet's leaving, and sees that to be a true and correct ruling, has strayed from the path of all the evidences, and indeed has missed the correct ruling and failed. And no prohibition is possible unless there comes what threatens the violator with punishment, or a censure of the act that announces a penalty, or a word of prohibition accompanied by blame. And the meaning of the words, very briefly, is that the Prophet's, upon him be blessings and peace, leaving is not a proof of prohibition, or is not evidence that this thing is forbidden.

So What Is the Scale Then?

Well, we are required to say: When the Prophet did not do such-and-such, is it lawful or unlawful? We will say, but on the basis of what? We will take this matter and return with it to other, completely different measures. So what are these measures? Does this matter contradict a foundation of the creed and the constants of the Sharia, or is it in agreement with the general purposes of the objectives (maqāṣid) of the Sharia?

Let us take Mother's Day as an example. It is said: This Mother's Day is an innovation and forbidden, and you are thus transgressing against the sanctities of Allah, and this is a law contrary to the law of the Lord of the worlds, and this and this and this, and you find a very large list of accusations. Well, what is the origin of how this matter arose? And where did it come from? And what is its aim? And what is intended behind it? And is this a matter that makes mothers happy or does not make them happy? Does it go on within the framework of dutifulness (birr) or the framework of disobedience (ʿuqūq)? We must make all these calculations before we say lawful or unlawful.

So we see whether the festival has a religious connection or not, and whether it has a connection to Islam, and whether it agrees with it. Like the matter of celebrating the Prophet's birth, upon him be blessings and peace. People, of course 90% of people today, say that celebrating the Prophet's birth, upon him be blessings and peace, is an innovation and forbidden. So I say to him: Well, come with me, if you please, and let us look at the paths of thinking today in reality. This boy, like that one you see over there,^[5] does not know much information about the Prophet, upon him be blessings and peace. If I took advantage of the occasion and brought a group of shaykhs and we sat and explained the biography of the Prophet, upon him be blessings and peace, and reminded people of the greatness of the Prophet's presence in our lives, then what evil resulted from that? He says to you: Man, you are legislating a religion! No, by Allah, I have legislated nothing. At the outset I said to the people: Our brothers, we have gathered today only to study the biography of the Prophet, upon him be blessings and peace, and to draw from the light of his life a set of lessons and counsels that we must act upon in our lives. So is this occasion religious? And is it in agreement with the foundations of the Sharia or different from them?

Number two: Is it different from Islam? For example the matter of Christmas, the festivals of the birth of Christ. Is this matter in agreement with the legislations of Islam? The sanctification of Christ to this degree, is it in agreement with our constants or different? No, different. So here we must stop, because in this way you are going against the direction, swimming against the current, and it is of no use. So I must stop here and say: This is forbidden, not merely because of the celebration, but because it contradicts one of the constants of the Islamic Sharia. So I returned to the origin of the matter from the standpoint of belief, and not from the standpoint of people's practices. As for people's practices, you may find people sitting in the church, and you of course do not agree with the origin of what they are on at all, from the issue that Allah, glory and exaltation be to Him, has a son, and that Allah, mighty and majestic, is the third of three, and all this talk. You count it a departure from the foundation of the oneness of God, and you count it disbelief and associating partners with Allah, glory and exaltation be to Him.

But if you imagined that these people are sitting doing things that are all good, with no alcohol or pork or such in them, then the act in itself is correct and the purpose of it is false. The act is correct: we are sitting eating now at a table, we gathered so we eat, and is eating lawful or unlawful? Eating is lawful, there is nothing forbidden in it, no alcohol and no pork. But if I said: Everything is forbidden, but I invited you to lunch because we are planning to kill so-and-so. You see, you caught the point? The origin of the food in itself that enters your mouth is lawful, but the origin of the gathering, the occasion, is it lawful or unlawful? So you answer me. And thus matters are measured by this juristic mentality, by which the rest of things are supposed to be measured.

From the Religious to the Social

Well, I have finished with the religious side. So when I go to the social, I find: Does the social side have a good significance or a bad significance? A good significance, like Thanksgiving. People gather to eat and drink. And today, when you are told that the largest proportion of travel on America's roads and its aviation occurs today specifically and yesterday, for the people who took leave from their work today and went yesterday, that is, yesterday and today, and perhaps tomorrow morning, you find the number of cars going on the road is not like any other day. Why? The whole society is together. You do not pass through any neighborhood without finding the number of cars standing in front of the houses more than you imagine, as if all the people are in…

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: The ḥadīth was narrated by Abū Dāwūd and al-Nasā'ī from the ḥadīth of Anas (may Allah be pleased with him), and in it the people of Medina had two days on which they played. The transcript's wording is distorted («أبدل كما»), and what has been recorded is close to the wording of the narration and the meaning is the same. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: The names of the occasions in the transcript are phonetically distorted (automatically), so only those of the known names that appeared with certainty were recorded; and some unclear names remained that were not mentioned, and the number of occasions is "some sixteen" as the lecturer said. ^[3]: Editor's documentation: The story is in the two Ṣaḥīḥs from the ḥadīth of Khālid ibn al-Walīd (may Allah be pleased with him), and the lecturer summarized the meaning in his own words and did not give the wording of the ḥadīth in full. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: The treatise «حسن التفهم والدرك لمسألة الترك» is by Shaykh ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ṣiddīq al-Ghumārī as far as we know, and the transcript says only "Shaykh al-Ghumārī." And the verses in the transcript are distorted in wording, so their content was reformulated in prose to the extent that it was established. ^[5]: Editor's documentation: The transcript's phrase here is unclear («ده عيل زي اللي مرمي هناك ده»), and it seems he is pointing to a boy present in the hall; so I did not name anyone.