Birthday Celebrations and the Mawlid

Question

We celebrated the birthday of our child, when he turned one year old, with great pomp: we invited a few people, cut the party cake and gave birthday congratulations. The matter to be ascertained is: is there no Shar‘i reprehensibility (karaha) in it? Or is it not prohibited on account of being a non-Islamic practice? After all, here among us the mawlid of the Prophet ﷺ is celebrated too?

Answer

Birthday celebration (holding a function and celebrating on the completion of a year from birth) is not an Islamic teaching; it is the way of others, and one should refrain from it. Holding the mawlid in the customary manner is likewise not established by Shar‘i proofs: for six centuries it did not exist; afterwards the ruler of Irbil invented it, and then many other wrong…

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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