What is the ruling on celebrating birthdays and other festivals?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
The questioner asks: Is celebrating the birthday, Mother's Day, and what are called national holidays a religious innovation (bid'ah)?
Answer:
We say that everything that is presented or occurs, we present it to the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). So, regarding festivals, birthdays, did this come in Islam in the Book of Allah or in the Sunnah of His Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), or in the Sunnah of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, or in the practice of the blessed centuries? Did any mention of birthdays come? No, it did not come; rather, it occurred after the blessed centuries, and the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) said:Sunan Abi Dawud 4607Sahih (Al-Albani). Yes.
The questioner asks: Is celebrating the birthday, Mother's Day, and what are called national holidays a religious innovation (bid'ah)?
Answer:
We say that everything that is presented or occurs, we present it to the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). So, regarding festivals, birthdays, did this come in Islam in the Book of Allah or in the Sunnah of His Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), or in the Sunnah of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, or in the practice of the blessed centuries? Did any mention of birthdays come? No, it did not come; rather, it occurred after the blessed centuries, and the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) said:
every novelty is an innovation, and every innovation is an error
كل محدثة بدعة وكل بدعة ضلالة
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، ما حكم الاحتفال بأعياد الميلاد وغيرها؟ للشيخ الفوزان — youtube.com
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.