Among these Sunan are:

– deeds whose continual neglect is strongly reprehensible;

– deeds whose neglect is disapproved, or whose performance is obligatory upon the leaders—imams, judges, governors—though not upon others; as a rule, such deeds must be taught, encouraged, and called to.

Many who denounce innovations in worship and custom are themselves remiss in practicing those very Sunan or in enjoining them. Indeed, the condition of many such critics may be worse than that of those who perform the censured acts of worship that contain some measure of dislike.

For religion is the joint work of commanding what is right and forbidding what is wrong; each depends upon the other. One must not forbid an evil unless he simultaneously commands a good that can take its place—just as people are commanded to worship God, exalted is He, and are forbidden to worship anything besides Him. The foundation of the matter is the testimony that there is no deity except God. Souls were created to act, not merely to abstain; abstention is sought only for the sake of something else. If a person does not busy himself with righteous deeds, he will not truly abandon wrong or deficient deeds. Yet because certain wrongs ruin the good deeds beside them, they have been prohibited in order to safeguard the good.

Accordingly, venerating the Prophet’s birthday and treating it as a special occasion is something some people may do, and for them there may be (1) tremendous reward because of their sincere intention and their reverence for the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, as I explained earlier: what may be acceptable coming from some people may be blameworthy when done by a rightly guided believer.

For this reason it was said to Imam Ahmad regarding one of the rulers that he had spent a thousand dinars—or thereabouts—on a single copy of the Qur’an. Ahmad replied, “Leave them; this is the best thing upon which they have spent their gold,” or words to that effect—even though his legal opinion was that decorating Qur’anic manuscripts is disliked. Some of his companions construed the statement to mean that the money had been spent on improving (2) the paper and calligraphy, but this was not Ahmad’s intent. What he meant was that the act carries a benefit, yet it also contains a harmful aspect on account of which it is disliked. Had those people not spent their wealth on this, they would have turned instead to corruption (3) rather than rectification.