or in both together, it is all the more repugnant: if Muslims themselves had introduced such a practice it would already be objectionable—so how much worse when it was never prescribed by any Prophet at all but actually invented by the unbelievers! To conform to it is therefore manifestly blameworthy. This is the first principle.

A second principle is this: every matter in which Muslims imitate them—whether it be an act of worship, a social custom, or both—is, for this Ummah, a newly introduced practice and a bidʿah, for our discussion concerns what is peculiar to them. As for what has been legislated for us and carried out by our early predecessors, it is outside the scope of this inquiry.

Consequently, all the proofs from the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and the consensus that establish the ugliness of innovations and their reprehensibility—whether strictly forbidden or strongly discouraged—encompass these forms of imitation. In such cases two descriptions coincide: they are newly invented innovations and they constitute imitation of the disbelievers. Each description on its own is a sufficient reason for prohibition, for imitation in general is forbidden, even if it should occur among earlier generations, and innovations are forbidden in general, even if the disbelievers had no part in them. When both descriptions coincide, they become two independent causes rendering the practice repugnant and prohibited.