Does naming the national day as the National Day remove the concern?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner:
He says: Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success, does naming national festivals as the National Day take them out of being prohibited?
The Shaykh:
A festival, as you know, is what recurs and returns, whether you call it the National Day, the Day of Sitting, the Mawlid Festival, or something else. The important thing is that it recurs every year, so that is the festival. Yes.
The questioner:
He says: Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success, what about one who is in the desert but goes to the nearest village to pray the festival prayer?
The Shaykh:
But the additions to the prescribed festival, as I mentioned to you. If it is considered an act of worship, it is a bid'ah (religious innovation), like the Mawlid Festival, which they consider an act of worship out of love for the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him); this is a bid'ah. But if it is not considered an act of worship, it is imitating the disbelieving states, and imitation is not permissible. So it is not permissible in any case, because it is either a bid'ah or imitation. Yes.
He says: Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success, does naming national festivals as the National Day take them out of being prohibited?
The Shaykh:
A festival, as you know, is what recurs and returns, whether you call it the National Day, the Day of Sitting, the Mawlid Festival, or something else. The important thing is that it recurs every year, so that is the festival. Yes.
The questioner:
He says: Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success, what about one who is in the desert but goes to the nearest village to pray the festival prayer?
The Shaykh:
But the additions to the prescribed festival, as I mentioned to you. If it is considered an act of worship, it is a bid'ah (religious innovation), like the Mawlid Festival, which they consider an act of worship out of love for the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him); this is a bid'ah. But if it is not considered an act of worship, it is imitating the disbelieving states, and imitation is not permissible. So it is not permissible in any case, because it is either a bid'ah or imitation. Yes.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، [508 -2802] هل تسمية العيد الوطني باليوم الوطني يرفع الحرج؟ - الشيخ صالح الفوزان — youtube.com
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.