They designate this season for dispatching agents to the tenant-farmers; on that day they prepare special dishes, dye eggs, spend lavishly, and deck out their children—along with other practices that cause the skin of any believer whose heart is still alive, who enjoins what is right and forbids what is wrong, to shudder.

A large number of them even spread their garments out beneath the open sky, hoping for the blessing of Mary’s passing over them, peace be upon her. Can anyone whose heart contains the faintest pulse of faith doubt that a law whose very hallmark, as we have shown, is to differ from the Jews and the Christians, could never countenance—nor could its Lawgiver ever approve of—such abominations?

They commit even worse than this: they smear the doors of their houses and their beasts with scented paste, red ochre, and the like—acts that rank among the gravest enormities in the sight of Allah. May Allah shield us from the evil of the innovators; in Allah alone lies success.

The root of the whole matter is that they either single out unbelievers’ festivals for new rites or imitate them in certain practices. To illustrate: they highly venerate the week that marks the end of their fast, calling its Thursday “the Great Thursday” and its Friday “the Great Friday,” and they exert themselves in devotion during it more than at any other time, treating it as the last ten nights of Ramadan are treated in the religion of Allah and His Messenger. As for the Sunday, the first day of the week—