Section on Innovated Time-Based Festivals
Types of Innovated Temporal Festivals

Section: We have already explained that the term “ʿīd” can refer to a particular place, a particular time, or a particular gathering. Innovations have been introduced into all three.

With regard to the time element, it falls into three categories, and within these are included certain innovations connected to place and to specific acts.

The first category concerns a day that the Sacred Law has not honored in any respect, that was never mentioned by the early generations, and in which nothing occurred that would justify venerating it—such as the first Thursday of the month of Rajab (1) and the night preceding that Friday, known as the Night of Raghaʾib (2).

The practice of exalting that day and night appeared in Islam only after the fourth century, and the ḥadīth cited in its support is fabricated by unanimous agreement of the scholars. Its purport is to proclaim the merit of fasting on that day and performing a particular prayer that the uninformed call the “Prayer of Raghaʾib” (3).

Some later scholars—among our own school and others—have mentioned it. However, the correct view held by the verifying scholars is the prohibition of singling out that day (4) for fasting, the prohibition of this innovated prayer, and the prohibition of anything that entails venerating that day.