Comparing birthday celebrations to traffic rules
15-12-2009 | IslamWeb
Question:
I read the Fataawa related to birthday celebrations and found that you consider them prohibited because they involve imitating the West and are religious innovations. I have a comment here: is any imitation of the West prohibited? We imitate the West in many of their educational, sporting, and other systems, and there is no text prohibiting these things. Also, celebrating birthdays brings about happiness (of course within Sharee‘ah defined boundaries) without causing harm. Birthday celebrations, despite being a foreign custom, are not something bad. We borrowed their traffic systems because it is fine to do so, so what is the problem in imitating them in this sort of celebration, particularly since birthdays are happy commemorations of the addition of a new member to the family. As for classifying them as religious innovations, I understand that religious innovation occurs only in matters of religion. It was narrated on the authority of ‘Aa’ishah, may Allaah be pleased with her, that the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said: "Whoever introduces to our religion a matter which does not belong to it, it is to be rejected." Celebrating birthdays is a social custom that does not involve introducing new matters into our upright religion. As I said before, we have introduced new things like traffic systems which were not existent at the time of the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, or his noble Companions, and nevertheless, they are not classified as newly-invented matters or religious innovations or imitation of the West. Please clarify in detail.
Answer:
All perfect praise be to Allaah, the Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is His Slave and Messenger.
Drawing an analogy between birthday celebrations and traffic systems or other worldly matters which benefit Muslims is invalid. That is because there is no harm in borrowing from non-Muslims the ways of managing the worldly affairs and people's interests, such as healthcare and the like which does not contradict the Islamic Sharee‘ah. The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said: "I was about to forbid you from Gheelah, but I found that Romans and Persians do it and it does not harm their children." [Muslim] Gheelah means having intercourse with one's wife during breastfeeding or breastfeeding during pregnancy.
As for birthday celebrations, there is an explicit prohibition from celebrating non-Islamic festivities. It is known that birthday celebrations do not belong to Muslim festivities nor have any origin in Islam. Rather, they are the unbelievers' festivities and it is not permissible to hold them. Anas 
said, “When the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, came to Madeenah, the people there had two days that they would celebrate. The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, asked them about these two days. They said that they would celebrate these two days during the pre-Islamic era. The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, told them that Allaah The Exalted had replaced these two days with the ‘Eeds of Al-Adh-Ha and Al-Fitr.” [Abu Daawood and An-Nasaa’i (Al-Albaani: Saheeh)] This Hadeeth indicates that Islam has only two ‘Eeds and that it is not permissible to celebrate any other festivities of the unbelievers or imitate them in that.
Allaah Knows best.