It’s my father’s birthday today and my whole family got mad at me for not saying happy birthday, as I have watched videos on youtube and the scholars have said it’s not allowed. I wanna know which is right because they are calling me an extremist but I’m scared of celebrating something unislamic.
1 Answer
Celebrating ones birthday is not a tradition that was or has been established in Arabia in the time of the Prophet.
There is no direct command in Quran or Hadith against celebration of birthdays, either.
The Salafi movement, aiming at a restoration of the region to what it has been in the times of the prophet (p.b.u.h). Part of it is the abolishment of celebration of the birth Mawlid an-Nabi as bidah.
In further development, Salafists reject any celebration of birthdays, considering it an imitation of non Islamic religion e.g. http://islamqa.info/en/ref/1027.
Some non-Salafist scholars support this view, others say that birthday parties have no religious but rather a social meaning and are allowed in Islam https://islamqa.org/?p=107643
Both positions are Islam. Going through online media, Salafi positions are much more present than traditional or liberal views so that they sometimes seem to be the majority consensus.
I personally share the view that a birthday celebration is a social non-religious event, and an occasion to meet friends. In a society where the majority of people celebrate birthdays like this, it is neither necessary nor beneficial not to celebrate birthday; it causes misunderstandings and isolation whereas there's hardly a reason to assume that it is basically against the will of God to congratulate and celebrate birthdays.
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Alright, thank you– user44223Jun 6, 2021 at 12:48