Full Lecture Transcript (Cleaned)
Religious Festivals of Other Faiths — 29:06
The third type of festivals are uniquely religious holy days — holidays such as Diwali, such as Christmas. Diwali is a celebration of Hinduism. Christmas is a celebration allegedly of the birth of Jesus. This is a uniquely religious festival.
There is no question that the Muslim does not celebrate the holy days of other religions. There are no two opinions about this. Any religious festival is not celebrated in the household of a Muslim.
The Nuance for Converts — 29:45
Now, again, nuance here as we explained in the second point — celebration means you endorse it, you go out, you participate. Now, a convert whose entire family is gathering together on Christmas — for that convert to go to their family, and basically that's the only time of the year they will meet their uncles and aunts and cousins and relatives and show them that he or she is a Muslim and talk about Islam organically — how can that be celebrating?
Yes, if the family is very religious and they come together and there's some du'a to Jesus and they have a prayer to God the Father or whatever — yes, the Muslim should not participate in a ritual directed to other than Allah. Agreed. But being a part of a family gathering when you're the convert and your whole family is non-Muslim — this is not you celebrating Christmas. You're going for the sake of being a Muslim among them when your family is there. Make your niyyah for that reason and go and be a part of the family gathering. But yes, if there are rituals, you should not participate.
Is Christmas Becoming Secular? — 51:55
The argument can be made that Christmas is heading towards becoming a secular holiday. And the response is: yes. Just like ancient paganistic traditions slowly became secular, Christmas is also on that route, and maybe a hundred years from now Christmas will be completely secular. And when that happens, we will pronounce a verdict on it based upon that context.
But right now, that is not the case. And right now, by and large, generally speaking, non-Christians do not celebrate Christmas the way that Christians do. Jewish Americans, by and large, do not celebrate Christmas. And I know this is an ambiguous area because change is happening. This fatwa is culture-based, and there are intermediate stages where it will be difficult.