Obedient Angel
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 | Subject: Differentiating between Customs & Religious Innovations  Sun Jun 17, 2012 10:43 am | |
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It s essential for Muslim preachers and Islamic workers to tolerate local customs and traditions, even if they are at variance with what they themselves are accustomed to. Therefore, it is imperative for Islamic workers to be able to distinguish between permitted customs and heretical religious innovations. We will endeavor in this article to give clear guidelines on how to make this distinction.
A general principle of Islamic Law is that the default assumption for customary and cultural practices is that they are permissible.
This principle means that the assumption of permissibility should be applied to all customs in the absence of any evidence to the contrary. Therefore, if anyone declares a certain customary practice to be sinful, that person will be required to produce evidence to support the claim.
If the custom or cultural practice is connected with an activity that is clearly established as sinful in Islam, then the custom itself is unlawful. This would include, for example, the custom of wearing gold and pure silk clothing for men. Also, if a customary practice invariably lead to what is clearly established as sinful in Islam – like customs that encourage fornication – then they are unlawful.
In the absence of such evidence, the custom should be assumed to be permissible.
However, the principle that customs are permissible by default only applies to customs that are not connected to formal rites of worship. Matters of ritual worship do not come under this default assumption. By contrast, the default assumption for religious rituals are that they are unlawful unless there is specific evidence from the Qur'an and Sunnah to establish their legitimacy.
Examples of customary matters falling under the general assumption of permissibility include: housing arrangements, transportation methods, clothing styles, food habits, marriage customs, and contract law.
Customs & Innovations - How to Tell the Difference
Many of the customs that people follow involve their means of doing good deeds to seek Allah's pleasure. This does not mean that these customs are unlawful innovations. We need to make a distinction between worship in the broad sense of "doing good deeds to please Allah" and worship in the sense of formal ritual.
Lawful customs can be distinguished from matters of formal worship by the following general rule:
The details of customary and cultural activities are governed by public opinion in matters that are discernable to the human mind. These are matters that fall within the domain of human knowledge and human habits. These include general ways and means to carry out good deeds. Paying charity in modern paper currency is not an innovation. Carpooling to the local mosque is not an innovation.
By contrast, matters of formal worship – like our method of prayer, its times, motions, and number of units, and like the determination of which month we must fast and where and how the rites of Hajj are to be carried out – are matters that cannot be ascertained by the human intellect. These matters can only be known through divine revelation.
Therefore, we can examine any custom using the following criteria:
1. If the custom or cultural practice is connected with seeking nearness to Allah in a general way, then it falls under worship only in the broadest sense, not in a formal, ritual sense. These activities include the means to carrying out a legitimate good deeds, and are rewarded as worship in the broadest sense if they are carried out with a pure intention. This includes any action that assists in doing good.
2. If the custom includes practices that resemble ritual devotional acts, then those customs fall under forbidden religious innovations. This would include specifying certain days for particular religious worship or religious celebrations, since this would be creating a new holiday besides the two days of `îd. It would also include activities that are directly connected with matters governed by Islamic ritual law or that resemble the practices of pre-Islamic ritual. Therefore, a custom of formal mourning at funerals would be an innovation. Excessiveness in religious devotion also falls under this category, like the practice of celibacy.
Of course, mundane customs that are not connected with devotion in any way fall under the general assumption of permissibility as long as there is no specific textual evidence to the contrary.
And Allah knows best.
http://en.islamtoday.net/artshow-430-3142.htm
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