r/IslamIsEasy

What Lady Maryam (peace be upon her) went through required immense strength to endure: carrying and giving birth to a child without a father, alone in her most vulnerable moments, accompanied by fear, anxiety, and worry about what people would say and how she would face them. Then came the gentleness of Allah, and the verses appear as a message of reassurance and comfort:
“Do not grieve. Your Lord has provided a stream beneath you.”
The word **“sariyyan” (سَرِي*ًّا) means a small flowing stream or watercourse—a source of fresh water running beneath her.
What is striking is that Maryam (peace be upon her) was commanded to shake the trunk of the palm tree: “And shake toward you the trunk of the palm tree,” even though she was in a state of extreme weakness and pain. This teaches us the importance of taking the available means. Allah سبحانه وتعالى was certainly able to make the dates fall upon her without her shaking the tree, but He wanted her to do what she was capable of, and then His provision would come to her from where she did not expect.
Allah says:
“It will cause ripe dates to fall upon you.”
The word “tusāqiṭ” (تُسَاقِطْ) conveys the successive falling of the dates, one after another. “Janiyya*n” (**جَنِيًّا) refers to ripe, freshly picked dates that have reached the time of harvest.
In other words, your Lord has taken care of your affairs and surrounded you with His care. He has provided you with water and food, so do not grieve:
“So eat, drink, and be comforted.”
The hardship that befell Maryam (peace be upon her) became so overwhelming that, in the intensity of her distress, she wished for death:
“Oh, I wish I had died before this and had become something forgotten and out of sight.”
Yet she did not know that what she perceived as nothing but a calamity was, in reality, a divine choice, an immense honor, and an elevation in rank.
The story of Maryam (peace be upon her) teaches us that what appears to be bad on the surface may ultimately carry tremendous good. We judge an event from the moment we are living through, while we cannot see the complete picture. As for Allah سبحانه وتعالى, He knows the beginning, the end, and the ultimate outcome of every matter.
O Allah, grant us a good outcome in all our affairs.

Dr Yasir Qadhi has discussed the question of non-Eid festivals in several lectures, and his position is much more nuanced than the simple claim that “Muslims can only celebrate two festivals and everything else is haram.” Across the three lectures, he repeatedly distinguishes between religious festivals, secular communal festivals, private personal celebrations, and festivals that occupy a gray area between the two. His framework also depends heavily on his understanding of tashabbuh bil-kuffar (imitating non-Muslims), the distinction between religion and culture, and the difference between a festival's ancient origins and what that festival actually means to people today.

1️⃣ Personal and Private Celebrations — Birthdays, Anniversaries, Graduations and Other Life Events

>Yasir Qadhi places personal and private celebrations in the first category. These are celebrations that an individual or family organizes for themselves rather than celebrations imposed or organized by the whole society, and which have no inherently religious purpose. Examples he gives include birthdays, marriage anniversaries, graduation parties, celebrating a new house, celebrating a new job or promotion, and other personal milestones.

>His position is that the Sharia is silent about these celebrations, meaning that it neither commands nor prohibits them. He strongly rejects the idea that simply having a recurring celebration automatically makes something bidʿah. In his view, bidʿah is an innovation in religion, something a person does as an act of religious devotion expecting Allah to reward them for it. A family celebrating the birthday of a child is not doing this as a new form of worship, and therefore, according to his understanding, it cannot simply be declared bidʿah because it happens every year.

>This is also why he repeatedly says that the hadith in which the Prophet told the people of Madinah that Allah had replaced their two days with two better days — Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha — cannot automatically be used to prohibit private celebrations. The people in that hadith were celebrating as a community, whereas a birthday party or anniversary dinner in someone's home is a fundamentally different phenomenon.

>He is particularly explicit about birthdays and marriage anniversaries. He says there is nothing in the Qur'an or Sunnah that prohibits a couple from making their wedding anniversary special every year. In fact, he argues that increasing love and affection between husband and wife is itself consistent with the aims of the Sharia. A husband taking his wife out for a romantic dinner on their anniversary is not an act of worship, but it can nevertheless serve a good purpose that the Sharia itself values.

>He also makes a distinction between his personal opinion and an Islamic ruling. He says that he himself did not grow up celebrating birthdays and has never had a birthday party. He even says that, personally, he thinks an adult throwing a birthday party can be childish. But he immediately emphasizes that his personal opinion does not become Sharia. He says someone may personally think birthdays are unnecessary, wasteful or childish, but that does not give them the right to say that Allah and His Messenger have made birthdays haram.

>He applies similar reasoning to Valentine's Day. He says that Valentine's Day is not presently a religious festival, and whatever pagan associations it may have had historically are irrelevant if those associations have disappeared from the modern practice. He gives the especially interesting example of converts who, before becoming Muslim, may have grown up treating Valentine's Day as a day for expressing romantic love. He says that such people should not automatically be told that doing something special on Valentine's Day is haram, provided that what they actually do remains within Islamic boundaries.

>So his first category is broad: birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, housewarming celebrations, promotion parties, Valentine's Day celebrations and other private milestones are, in his view, permissible provided that the actual contents of the celebration are halal.

2️⃣ Communal and Secular Celebrations — Thanksgiving, Independence Day, National Days and Similar Holidays

>The second category consists of communal celebrations that are not inherently religious. Yasir Qadhi's main examples are Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, as well as national days and similar secular holidays.

>Here his conclusion is again that the Sharia is generally silent. He says that a Muslim may celebrate Thanksgiving, eat a turkey on Thanksgiving, spend time with family, or simply ignore the holiday. Likewise, a Muslim living in America can have a Fourth of July barbecue, take the children outside to watch fireworks, or otherwise enjoy the secular aspects of the day.

>He argues that Thanksgiving today is a generic American cultural celebration, not an inherently religious festival. He says that Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, agnostics and others can all participate in Thanksgiving. Unlike Christmas, where Christians generally celebrate and Jews generally do not, Thanksgiving is broadly shared across religious boundaries in American society. This is evidence that Thanksgiving is no longer functioning as a religious festival. He also says that someone can perfectly reasonably refuse to celebrate Thanksgiving for historical or ethical reasons, including concerns about colonialism and the treatment of Native Americans. But that would be a person's own ethical or historical judgment. He objects to turning such a judgment into an Islamic claim that “Allah has forbidden Thanksgiving.” His point is that the Sharia itself is silent about this type of secular personal or communal celebration.

>He does, however, introduce an important distinction between individual participation and religious institutions actively promoting a festival. Qadhi says that he does not think mosques and religious scholars should make secular holidays the major communal festivals of Muslim life. The two Eids should retain their special status, and Muslim children should primarily look forward to Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha as their great religious celebrations.

>His example of the Fourth of July makes his point particularly forcefully. He asks whether Islam really tells a Muslim that he is sinful for inviting friends and family into his backyard for a barbecue on the Fourth of July, or for taking his children to watch fireworks. His answer is no. He regards those as ordinary secular activities rather than acts of religious worship.

>He also argues that every Muslim-majority country has national holidays and days off beyond the two Eids. Therefore, he considers it excessively strict to suggest that the existence of a national holiday automatically makes it a religious innovation.

>He is nevertheless cautious about the institutional encouragement of secular festivals. In his view, religious authorities should not make national days or other secular holidays into central features of Muslim religious life. There is also a potential danger that excessive celebration of national identity could turn into unhealthy nationalism. But again, that does not automatically make the holiday itself haram.

3️⃣ Religious Festivals of Other Faiths — Christmas, Diwali, Easter, Hanukkah and Similar Festivals

>According to him, Religious festivals belonging to another religion are not to be celebrated by Muslims.

>He gives Christmas, Diwali, Easter and Hanukkah as examples. His position is that Muslims should not adopt these festivals as their own celebrations or perform the distinctive religious customs associated with them.

>This is where he believes the strongest application of tashabbuh bil-kuffar exists. He says that imitating something that is uniquely religious, for example, participating in another religion's worship, adopting its distinctive religious symbols or celebrating its religious festival as a believer in that religion is prohibited.

🎄 Christmas: what exactly is prohibited? 🎄

>Yasir Qadhi is quite specific about Christmas. He says that Muslims should not celebrate Christmas as Christmas. He explicitly says Muslims should not bring a Christmas tree into their homes and decorate it as part of Christmas, because that is not merely observing somebody else's culture; it is deliberately adopting a symbol associated with their religious festival.

>He also distinguishes between celebrating Christmas and merely encountering Christmas in public. He says that if a Muslim walks past a house decorated for Christmas, watches Christmas lights, Christmas tree, Christmas parade or encounters Christmas decorations in a public setting, merely watching them does not mean that the Muslim has participated in Christmas.

>He therefore rejects the idea that Muslims have to behave as though they cannot even look at Christmas decorations. He gives examples such as seeing a beautiful church, stained-glass windows or Christmas decorations while passing through a public place. Merely observing these things does not amount to endorsing Christian belief.

>He also says that Christmas sales are permissible to take advantage of. Buying something because a store happens to be having a Christmas sale is not the same thing as celebrating Christmas. Likewise, he says there is nothing inherently wrong with buying ordinary products during the Christmas season.

>He does, however, draw a line between generic decorations and specifically Christmas decorations. He says that ordinary colored lights are not automatically Christmas symbols. But deliberately decorating one's own home around Christmas in a manner intended to participate in the Christmas atmosphere is problematic because it amounts to adopting a celebration that is not one's own.

🎄 Christmas parties and office celebrations 🎄

>He makes another important distinction between religious Christmas celebrations and ordinary workplace gatherings that happen around Christmas.

>He says that an office Christmas party is not necessarily a religious celebration at all. In a typical workplace, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, atheists and agnostics may all be present. There may be food, gift exchanges and decorations, but there is no Christian worship taking place.

>For that reason, he says that simply attending a generic office party around Christmas can be permissible. The determining factor is what actually takes place there, not merely the calendar date. If the party involves alcohol, inappropriate dancing or another independently prohibited activity, then those activities are haram for their own reasons. But the fact that the office calls it a Christmas party does not automatically transform every aspect of the event into a religious ritual.

>He makes essentially the same point concerning campus and workplace events around Diwali. If a university or workplace has a generic cultural gathering with decorations and food, the mere fact that it happens around Diwali does not automatically make everything at the event religious participation. What matters is what the Muslim is actually doing.

🎄 Christmas and converts 🎄

>He says it can be unreasonable and even harmful to tell a convert that they cannot attend the one major annual gathering when their entire non-Muslim family comes together. A convert may have parents, grandparents, siblings, uncles, aunts and cousins who all gather at Christmas. For that person, attending can be an opportunity to maintain family ties and demonstrate Islam through their presence and character.

>He therefore says that a convert may attend a family Christmas gathering without that automatically meaning they are celebrating Christmas, provided they do not participate in the actual Christian religious rituals.

>If the family begins praying to Jesus, praying to God as part of a Christian religious ritual, or otherwise asks the Muslim to participate in worship directed toward other than Allah, Qadhi says the Muslim should not participate in that ritual.

>His distinction is therefore between family presence and religious participation. The convert can attend for the sake of family relationships, while refusing to perform the religious elements.

🎁 Christmas gifts and gifts from other festivals 🎁

>He says Muslims can accept gifts given to them because of another religion's festival. He points to reports about ʿAli and ʿAʾishah receiving gifts from Zoroastrians on Nowruz.

>His conclusion is that an ordinary halal gift can be accepted even if it is given on somebody else's religious holiday. The key distinction is between an ordinary social gift and something that has been specifically consecrated as an offering to another deity.

>Thus, receiving ordinary sweets, food or presents from a Christian colleague at Christmas does not automatically become haram merely because of the date. The contents themselves must still be halal.

🎄 Christmas greetings 🎄

>Yasir Qadhi is more cautious about Christmas greetings. He explains that scholars differ over whether saying “Merry Christmas” amounts to endorsing Christian beliefs. He presents the argument of scholars who prohibit the greeting, particularly the Ibn Taymiyyah-inspired argument that congratulating someone on their religious festival can be interpreted as congratulating them on their religious belief.

>But he also points out that other scholars distinguish between endorsing somebody's theology and simply wishing them well.

>His own practical recommendation is to avoid getting unnecessarily trapped in that debate. He does not declare in this lecture that “Merry Christmas” is definitively haram, but he recommends using a generic greeting such as “God bless you,” “Happy holidays,” or another neutral expression. In his view, this is a safer way of maintaining kindness without making one's position on a disputed theological question.

>So his Christmas position is not “anything associated with Christmas is haram.” Rather, celebrating Christmas as a Christian festival is prohibited, but observing decorations, buying ordinary products during Christmas sales, accepting ordinary gifts, attending certain non-religious office or family gatherings, visiting churches for non-religious reasons, and using generic goodwill are treated differently.

4️⃣ Gray-Area Festivals — Halloween

>The fourth category is the most complicated one, and this is where Yasir Qadhi's treatment of Halloween has evolved between his older and newer lectures.

>In his earlier lectures (2018), he described Halloween as a festival in the gray zone because it still had religious and pagan associations. He said there were still segments of society that treated it religiously and that Halloween retained associations with Satan, jinn and similar ideas. Because of that, he considered it difficult to place it clearly into either the fully secular or fully religious category.

>In the most recent lecture (2025), however, he explicitly says that Halloween is not currently a religious festival. No mainstream religion treats contemporary Halloween as its religious holy day, and ordinary people who celebrate Halloween are not generally worshipping a deity or performing an act of religious devotion (but he still keeps it in the grey area for another reason, which has been discussed below)

>This is an important distinction from his older presentation. His newer argument is that the ancient pagan origins of Halloween do not, by themselves, make the modern celebration a pagan religious ritual.

>He traces Halloween's historic roots to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which had pagan religious elements and was associated with the end of the agricultural year and the boundary between the living and the dead. Christianity later transformed and reinterpreted aspects of the tradition, and Irish immigrants brought Halloween customs to America. He argues that the modern American form was then radically reshaped by American culture, commercialization, the candy industry, costume companies and Hollywood.

>He therefore says it is inaccurate to imagine that every modern child going trick-or-treating is literally continuing a two-thousand-year-old pagan ritual.

>He also discusses modern Wiccans and people who consciously celebrate Samhain. He acknowledges that such people exist, but argues that they are a tiny fringe minority and that their modern revival of Samhain is itself influenced by the modern Halloween tradition.

🎃 Why does he still think Halloween should be avoided? 🎃

>Although He now says that Halloween is not a religious festival today, he does not put it into the same category as Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July.

>The problem, in his present analysis, is that Halloween retains a strong association with demons, ghosts, evil spirits, the dead, jinn, the unseen world and supernatural horror. He says that every October, popular culture reinforces these themes through horror movies, ghost stories, demon imagery and similar entertainment.

>Thus, Halloween is not religious in the same way that Christmas or Diwali are religious, but it is also not completely neutral. That continuing association with the supernatural makes it a gray area.

>For this reason, Qadhi says that he personally would be much more comfortable describing Halloween as makruh rather than definitively haram, and he says Muslims should avoid actively participating in it. He repeatedly emphasizes that the word haram is very serious and should not be used casually.

🎃 What about children dressing as cartoon characters? 🎃

>He acknowledges that most children today do not necessarily dress up as demons or witches. They may dress up as cartoon characters, superheroes or fictional characters and go from house to house collecting candy.

>This makes the matter even more complicated in his view. He says that if Halloween were simply a children's costume-and-candy event with no connection at all to demons, ghosts or otherworldliness, he could imagine a different ruling.

>He even says that perhaps in ten or twenty years the supernatural dimension will disappear almost completely and Halloween will simply become a children's cultural celebration. If that happens, he says the ruling could change.

>But because the supernatural symbolism still exists today, he recommends avoiding active participation.

The underlying principle: Non Muslim/Pagan origin versus present meaning

>One of the most important principles running through all three lectures is that the historical origin of a practice is not automatically what determines its present Islamic ruling.

>If something originated as pagan worship but has completely lost that religious meaning and is now understood as an ordinary cultural practice, he says the ruling should reflect the current reality.

>His examples include mehndi, wedding rings, the names of the days and months, the Olympics, and yoga.

>He uses this reasoning to explain why he does not consider modern Halloween automatically pagan simply because ancient Samhain had pagan religious elements.

>The same principle is why he says Christmas could theoretically change category in the future. At present, he says, Christmas remains clearly Christian in its religious meaning, so Muslims should not celebrate it. But if, many generations from now, Christmas became entirely secular and lost its Christian association, he says the ruling would have to be reconsidered on the basis of its new meaning.

His understanding of tashabbuh bil-kuffar (imitating the kaafirs)

>Yasir Qadhi also repeatedly rejects the simplistic formula that “whatever non-Muslims do, Muslims cannot do.”

>He argues that tashabbuh requires something more specific: deliberately going out of one's way to imitate something that characterizes another civilization or religion and is not part of one's own cultural environment.

>He points out that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ himself dressed, spoke and lived culturally like the Arabs around him, even though many of those Arabs were pagans. Therefore, Muslims cannot interpret the hadith “Whoever imitates a people is one of them” as meaning that Muslims must look, eat, speak and behave completely differently from the non-Muslims around them.

>He gives examples of Muslim societies adopting things from other civilizations, including food, technology and even cultural practices.

>He therefore argues that Muslims living permanently in America, Canada, Britain or other Western societies should not think that everything around them automatically constitutes tashabbuh. Their surrounding culture is also their culture, especially for Muslims who were born and raised there.

>But he still believes that religiously distinctive practices, such as celebrating Christmas as a Christian festival remain outside that cultural permission.

His understanding of Muslims having only two Eid

>He says that the hadith where the Prophet ﷺ came to Madinah, found the people celebrating two days from the days of Jāhiliyyah, and said that Allah had substituted for them two better days, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha is the main evidence used by scholars who prohibit other festivals. He accepts that it is a serious piece of evidence, but argues that it cannot establish a blanket prohibition on every kind of celebration. According to his usūl-based reading, the wording “Allah has substituted two days better than those two” does not explicitly say, “all other celebrations are haram,” so the maximum that can reasonably be derived from it is that Muslims should have only these two major communal Islamic religious festivals, and that other recurring communal festivals could potentially be regarded as makruh or discouraged rather than categorically haram. He emphasizes especially that the hadith concerns a communal celebration, because the people of Madinah were collectively celebrating those days; therefore, he says it cannot legitimately be extended to private celebrations such as a birthday party, a wedding anniversary, a graduation party, or a family gathering.

>He also challenges the assumption that the two pre-Islamic days mentioned in the hadith were merely secular holidays: it is equally plausible, he says, that they involved pagan religious elements, which would mean the Prophet ﷺ was specifically replacing Jāhiliyyah religious festivals with the two Islamic Eids. He further notes that Ibn Taymiyyah himself, whom later scholars frequently invoke in this debate, was discussing recurring communal festivals, not private individual celebrations, and Qadhi argues that modern Salafi applications sometimes extend Ibn Taymiyyah's argument beyond what his writings actually address. Thus, Yasir Qadhi's position in this lecture is that the hadith establishes a strong boundary around religious festivals and supports the idea that the Muslim community should have its two principal Islamic Eids, but it does not prove that every recurring secular or personal celebration is forbidden.

Links to the three lectures:

• Fiqh of Celebrations - Dr. Sh. Yasir Qadhi (2018)

• The Islamic Ruling on Celebrating Thanksgiving, Birthdays, and other Holidays | Ask Shaykh YQ #118 (2020)

• What Can You Celebrate? - The Fiqh of Celebrations (2025)

Sources: https://www.bbc.com/bengali/articles/cy8mkvdvr3jo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVR39mDK1gk

Assalamu alaykum everyone.
Is shaking hands with a non-mahram permissible in Islam? This can sometimes be a difficult situation, especially in workplaces, universities, or social settings where refusing a handshake may feel awkward.
We’ve put together a short explanation with the relevant Qur’an and Hadith references in the image above.
If anyone has a specific situation they’re unsure about, AskMuftiOnline also allows you to submit your question and explain your circumstances to a qualified Mufti.
May Allah guide us to what is correct. Ameen.

Source: “Muhammad - The Prophet of Peace Amid The Clash of Empires” by Juan Cole

Surah Al-Fath was revealed to the Prophet ﷺ two years before the Conquest of Makkah. The Prophet ﷺ said:
“A Surah has been revealed to me that is more beloved to me than everything upon which the sun has risen.”
He was returning to Madinah after the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, and the “victory” referred to in the Surah was this very treaty. Some of the Companions initially thought that the treaty represented a setback and weakness for the Muslims. They had set out from Madinah for Makkah in a state of ihram to perform Umrah, but Quraysh prevented them from entering Makkah. The matter ultimately ended with a treaty requiring them to return that year without performing Umrah, with the agreement that they would return to perform it the following year. A truce was also established between the Muslims and Quraysh.
Yet Allah تعالى called this very event a victory, saying:
**﴿Indeed, We have granted you a clear victory.﴾**
The verse uses the past tense: ﴿We have granted﴾, as though the victory had already occurred and been completed. This affirmed the certainty of Allah’s promise and demonstrated that it was already accomplished, even though its effects had not yet appeared.
The victory here was far greater than merely winning a battle. It was an opening of the way, victory and the triumph of truth, and empowerment. And this is exactly what happened. The treaty brought an end to the war and opened the door to security and communication. People were now able to see and interact with the Muslims away from the atmosphere of fighting and hostility, and Islam consequently spread widely.
However, the treaty was violated about two years later. This became one of the direct reasons that led to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ entering Makkah with his Companions as conquerors. Around ten thousand Muslims entered Makkah with him, including those who had once been prevented from entering it. They returned to it, this time as conquerors.
The Companions saw the gates of Makkah closed before them, while Allah تعالى was opening for them another door—one they could not yet see.
So do not rush to judge what has been closed before you. The door that has been closed may itself be leading you to a greater one. And what appears to you today as a denial may be the beginning of a victory whose آثار you have not yet seen.

This noble verse portrays one of the most powerful images of regret: a profound remorse so intense that it produces an involuntary physical reaction—biting one’s hand. It is the remorse of the wrongdoer who abandoned the path of the Messenger ﷺ and the truth he brought from Allah—the manifest truth in which there is no doubt—and chose another path.
In the end, he will discover that he had been deceived in many of his decisions, and that he spent his life walking the wrong path while the right path had been clear before him.
And what is even more painful than the regret itself is realizing the truth after it is too late—when regret is of no avail, wishes are of no benefit, and decisions can no longer be undone.
It is a verse that speaks broadly of every wrongdoer. Allah تعالى says:
“On the Day when their faces are turned about in the Fire, they will say, ‘If only we had obeyed Allah and obeyed the Messenger.’”
(Qur’an 33:66)
How could a person of such greatness devote his life to bringing us the message of Allah تعالى, endure hardship and suffering for its sake, and strive until it reached us clear and preserved—only for us to take the message and leave the one who showed us the way?
“With the Messenger” means taking the guidance of the Messenger ﷺ as our companion along this path: following his guidance and walking the way to which he directed us.
Allah تعالى says:
“Whoever obeys the Messenger has truly obeyed Allah.”
(Qur’an 4:80)
“Whatever the Messenger gives you, take it; and whatever he forbids you, abstain from it.”
(Qur’an 59:7)
O Allah, grant us the ability to follow Your Prophet ﷺ beautifully in this life, to love him and emulate him, grant us his intercession in the Hereafter, and gather us among his companions.