Section: Other Invented Festivals and Seasons
Whatever seasons and festivals have been newly introduced are reprehensible for two reasons
First: All such festivals and seasons fall under the designation of newly contrived innovations
Among the condemnable matters in this regard are all innovated festivals and seasons; they are censured and disliked, whether that dislike reaches the level of prohibition or not. The festivals of the People of the Book and of foreign nations were forbidden for two reasons:
- They involve imitating the unbelievers, and
- They are innovations.
Accordingly, any season or festival that is introduced is objectionable, even if it does not entail imitation of the People of the Book, for two reasons:
First: it falls under the heading of newly invented innovations, and thus comes under the ḥadīth related by Muslim in his Ṣaḥīḥ on the authority of Jābir, who said:
“Whenever the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—delivered a sermon, his eyes would redden, his voice would rise, and his anger would intensify, as though he were warning an army. He would say, ‘Morning is upon you! Evening is upon you!’ He would also say, ‘I have been sent, together with the Hour, like these two,’ and he would join his index and middle fingers. Then he would say, ‘To proceed: the best speech is the Book of Allah, the best guidance is the guidance of Muhammad, and the worst of matters are their newly introduced ones; every innovation is misguidance.’”[3]
In another wording recorded by al-Nasāʾī[4]: “and every misguidance is in …”