We have rain here in California….Alhamdullilah!!! less trick or treaters & less chance of our car being vandalized or our house egged like it has been for the last two years….grrr

I love rain !!! Mercy from Allah SWt. Alhamdullilah!

HAHA..closing your porch light and putting up a sign saying you dont celebrate halloween..That is just an invitation for non-stop egging

excellent points mashallah ^^

Islamic Parenting is an topic which should be talked about MUCH MUCH more in our communities whether by word of mouth or organized classes, workshops, seminars or halaqas.

Here is a great talk by Yusuf Estes: Halloween Tips.

You can get some benefits out of Halloween by doing the following:

-Buy LOTS of Candy NOW since it is cheap
-When Eid comes around in December you can hand it out to little kids and just anyone enmasse
–> I have been doing this for over a year and even on Jumaah, and I can tell you kids LOVE IT, we need to build that love of the masjid
This candy will last you a couple of months and it is VERY HARD to find a big enough selection, in bulk, that is cheap as well.

-The other thing you can do with that candy is save it for Feed the Streets AKA Project Downtown
-Make some bagged lunches with a halal sandwich, granola bar, watter bottle, fruit, friendly note and some halloween candy
–> Who needs the food more than the homeless and hungry?
Give it to THE POOR and earn hasanat.

I think I sense a new facebook group coming on… :)

Yeah…I am wouldn’t doubt that there is more than one opinion one this fellas…I know some scholars say Birthdays are halaal because it has no religious connotation whatsoever…yeah sure, one could argue that Halloween has religious connotation but for a culture that thinks Easter is about a bunny, I don’t think anyone could care about the religious connotation of Halloween.

My take is if you are going to go out Trick or Treatin’, do it for CHARITY and ask people for non-perishable goods you can give to the foodbank, at least make it an opportunity to do some khayr, no?

Ever since I was little, I’ve hated the thought of halloween. Kids who have the money to get some candy go around to everyone’s houses and beg for more? I mean come on, I’d rather do the trick part then spoil them with more treats. Every year we didn’t give out candy, there has been some sort of egging/vandalism. But, I have to say, insha’Allah it’ll get less and less every year.;) I don’t recommend the sign, but I do recommend turning off the lights OR what we always did was go to a relatives house and visit. If you’re giving out candy to just be a good neighbor, I don’t see the point of doing it on October 31st of all days that you could have been doing it. Khair, I think that it’s another excuse to spend more money on useless costumes and candy. I also am afraid for those who decorate their house by making it look like a graveyard, I don’t think death/fear should be made fun of like this, because indeed, it’s a very serious matter. It’s just when I see those bodys hanging off the trees, I think to myself, “Oh my god, aren’t they just a little scared of the hereafter?” May Allah(swt) keep us on the Sirat-ul-Mustaqeem.Ameen! :)

I know this is absolutely irrelevant but still posting due to specific need. One of the novelists in our country has claimed that (in the issue of permissibility in erecting statues) that The Prophet (saws) while he broke all the idols of the ka’aba spared a a picture of Maryam (a). he sited as evidence seerah of Ibn Ishaq translated by Alfred Gillaume with the title “The Life of Muhmmad.” I do not see the the book anywhere. Can anybody verify for me whether it really was the case. Was it in the original seerah? Was it an addition in the translation? was it a weak narration or something of that sort. Or was it a fact which implies a different fiqh issue?

And If you can then kindly give me the reference from that book of this incident. Sorry for going off-topic. But this is a necessity.

Amad, I agree with Dawud Israel. I think that a) in the US at least, by the vast majority of people, Halloween is not celebrated with any religious connotation. It’s purely seen as a fun holiday. People tend not to even dress up as a spooky things anymore, mostly as basically anything they like. I think it’s a time where you can have fun yourself (you don’t need, again, to celebrate it with any religious connotation, merely just as a big fancy dress party), pass out candy to neighbourhood kids in the spirit of goodwill (part of integration is to be able to engage in the society of others without compromising yourself) and perhaps even go trick-a-treating to collect non-perishable goods to give to the needy, which is I think a far better act in the eyes of Allah swt than going around prostelizing about Islam.

When you have kids who are growing up in the West, I think it is more harmful than not to ban them from participating in things such as Halloween, birthdays, Easter and Christmas. There is always a way to participate and not compromise your beliefs and engage more with the society in whcih you live – and what a society celebrates is as important as anything else. If you can do both, I think it is far healthier and makes you a far more well-rounded person. And your faith is in your heart, as much as it is in your acts. You can use any act, like this, not only to confirm the best parts of your faith (giving to charity), but also by reaching out to others, and it’s entirely possible to be part of more than one culture at the same time.

Assalaamu alaikum,

Even if we don’t see it as a religious holiday, it’s simply imitation of the disbelievers. If we are going to compromise on our deen while living in the lands of the non-Muslims and live their lifestye, then we should leave.

It surprises me how much effort some Muslims put into celebrating non-Muslim holidays, and when it comes to our Eid they talk about how boring it was and how they did nothing special on that day. SubhanaAllah, why should our Muslim children see Eid as any other day? The parents, especially when living in non-Muslim lands, should do as much as possible to celebrate Eid with their family. It’s an act of worship.

Moreover, to me, sending our kids for trick-or-treating is like teaching them to beg.

And Allah knows best.

its totally not teaching your kids to beg.. it is just someting fun. I totally agree with sister Fatimah. you know the people who give out the candy also enjoy the kids costumbes. its like a two way thing. l

imitation of disbelievers? that is a very broad subject and there are many differences of opinons by scholars on what exactly ‘imitation ‘ means. when there is something good in it I dont c anything wrong.

I think that if u dont want ur kids to celebrate it fine, but why go around telling other people they are doing ‘bad’ when they are really not.

exactly nobody has to go overboard. my son wears his same fireman costume which (teaches good things) only once a yr and goes to the mall what could be more safer and not over done?

Amad – but in the end, whether you like it or not, everyone DOES interpret their faith differently. Their love for Allah might be the same, but that’s why we have many different schools of Islamic law, for example, not everyone can agree on what being a Muslim really entails. So there actually is a different religion in every household.

Also, that article is based on an incorrect premise – Halloween, or originally Samhain, was actually not a celebration of Satan. It was a celebration of the end of the harvest. The dead spirits got involved because people did not want them causing mischief with the harvest, so they attempted to trick or placate them. In fact, the article claims that Christmas is better for Muslims to celebrate, when arguably Christmas also derives from a pagan festival – December 25th was an arbitrary date chosen by Pope Julius I for Jesus’s birthday and before that, throughout Europe, December 25th was a date for celebrating the winter solstice with pagan rituals. Christmas is really that celebration given a new name and identity. So Halloween, which is no longer celebrated for any reasons to do with spirits or harvests, is merely now a holiday arguably primarily based around the ritual of trick-or-treating, which less and less people do each year. So I think Halloween is now purely social.

I’m not going to tell you how it is best to establish your identity as a Muslim, or what you should or shouldn’t feel comfortable doing. But I think that two things are important to remember. Firstly, Muslims have not integrated successfully. This is neither the fault of Muslims or of the societies they live in only – it’s both. But, I have lived in four different countries now (three of which were in the West) and based on my personal experience it seems to me that Muslims keep themselves isolated as much as society isolates them. Part of this is what Fahad is referring to – we are overly consumed with petty issues and we tend to think that other societies are something that will corrupt us, rather than something we can learn from and engage with. The Prophet learned from other societies and reached out to them -Christian and Jewish societies also. Islam was never meant to be an insular thing. Muslims are part of an ummah, yes, but we are also part of a world. This approach to Halloween – that it’s evil – is on a very small and insignificant scale a typical display of what’s wrong with our approach to the world generally. We have to reach out and understand other people and engage in their celebrations and societies before we can expect them to understand us. We should be concentrating on bigger issues than things like whether wearing fancy dress is wrong, whether wearing jewelry is wrong, whether listening to music is wrong, whether sitting next to someone of the opposite sex is wrong. There is a great deal of poverty and a lack of education in Muslim societies all over the world. At least you and I can have a conversation about our own religion, but many Muslims I meet do not even know enough about the history of Islam or why they do what they do to have this conversation.

We need to start being part of the real world – while maintaining the important parts of our faith (charity, true prayer, kindness, equality, etc) and establishing a personal relationship with Allah – because if we don’t, we are only going to be left behind and marginalised even further.

And who said there is a difference of opinion on the matter of celebrating halloween? Please give me a scholar who have given a fatawa that you can go ahead and celebrate halloween.

Difference of opinion is not something that you can talk about when there is no other scholarly opinion with evidences from Quran and Sunnah to support it. Opinion is not your own opinion that came to your mind when you woke up in the morning. Islamic opinion comes from Quran and Sunnah and has evidences from the text supporting its case. Bring me an opinion which tells that celebrating Halloween is halal. Then we will discuss because at this point there is only one opinion that it is not allowed to celebrate it.

So citing :”Difference of opinion” in these case is really a lame excuse and shameful.

why make islam harder than it is? is taking your kid for candy in the mall such a big crime?!

well brother suhail it really upsets me when people talk in assumptions

i did not take my kid to fulfill ‘his desires’ as u say. my kid is very unspoiled. the candy will last him a very very long time just because of the fact that he can barely ever have it.

so I do not appreciate the fact that you assumed that even after I have clearly said that I took him bc I dont c anything wrong with it.. just a fun thing..a happy occasion

Brother Amad I also grew up here in the south side and have grown up celebrating halloween. most of the muslims i grew up with did the same even the very religious ones. we did not see ne harm in it.
at the same time we never celebrated christmas or easter. again I dont think the argument against it is strong enough. andAllah swt gave us a brain to even us ‘laymen’