📘 ❞ The Obligation of Adhering to the Sunnah and a Caution Against Innovation ❝ كتاب ــ Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz

عن كتاب The Obligation of Adhering to the Sunnah and a Caution Against Innovation:
All praise be to Allah who completed the religion for us, perfected the
blessing on us and chose Islam as our religion. May the blessings and
peace be upon His servant and Apostle, who called upon people to
obey his Lord and cautioned against extravagance, innovation and
disobedience; And may Allah bless his posterity, his companions and
those who follow his footsteps till the Day of Judgment.
I have reviewed with the article published in the first page of the
weekly magazine “Idaarat” of the Kanpur, Industrial city of Utter
Pradesh in India. The writer alleges that the creed of the Salaf (Early
adherents to Islam) does not agree with the Sunnah. By this, the
writer aims at creating division amongst Ahl-us-Sunnah1

and en-
couraging innovations and superstitions. This attitude, no doubt, is

most abominable and dangerous, and it aims at offending the Reli-
gion of Islam and spreading innovations and deviations from the

truth. Furthermore, the article concentrates clearly on the subject of
celebrating the Prophet’s birthday as an excuse to discuss the creed
of others. Therefore, I consider it necessary to enlighten the People
on this subject. So seeking help of Allah, I say [the following]:

1 Ahl-us-Sunnah and Jamaa‘ah: Those who adhere to the Sunnah – the narra-
tions of the Prophet ()- and the Jamaa‘ah –the beliefs and methodology of the gen-
eral body of Sahaabah.





It is not permissible to celebrate the birthday of the Apostle (), or
anyone else. In fact, this act must be prevented, as it is an innovation
in the religion. The Apostle of Allah () neither celebrated it, nor did
he commanded others to do so, whether in his commemoration, in
any of the previous Prophets, in his daughters, his wives, or his other

relatives. The Khulafaa ́-ur-Raashidoon, the Sahaabah, and the Ta-
bi‘oon who rightly followed them did not celebrate this event, nor did

any of the Muslim scholars in the centuries before.
They knew the Sunnah of the Prophet best, they loved him more,
and followed the Shari‘a better than those who came after them. If
celebrating his birthday was a good deed, they would have done it.

We are commanded to follow and forbidden to innovate. This is be-
cause of the perfection of the Islamic religion and the Sufficiency of

what Allah and His Messenger have given us and are accepted by

Ahl-al-Sunnah wal-Jama’ah- The Muslim community of the compa-
nions and those who followed them in the best way.

It is related to the prophet that he said:
“He who innovates something in this matter of ours that

is not of it, will have it rejected.” (Transmitted by Al-
Bukhari and Muslim).

According to Muslim who reported:
“Whoever does an act which is not in agreement with
our matter, will have it rejected.”



A small but beneficial treatise concerning innovation, celebrating the birth of the Prophet s , as well as a small note about Wahhabiyyah and the creed Muhammad bin AbdulWahhab.