Candles and Condemnations

Iqbal Alam
Aug 8, 2017 · 5 min read

Mufti Menk has become a well known figure in the burgeoning space of Islamic evangelism. He trained as an Islamic legal scholar at prestigious institutions in Saudi Arabia and India before turning his knowledge, wisdom and charm towards educating Muslims about their religion, first in Zimbabwe and then, arguably, the world.

Over time, Menk has garnered a significant following for a somewhat balanced approach towards the religion. Occasionally, his views may not accord with the general secular zeitgeist, say, for instance, his condemnation of homosexuality.

Menk was criticised for holding less than salubrious views on homosexuality, even though these are clearly rooted in Islamic teachings. Homosexuality has become a lightening rod for uproar and scrutiny of religion as a social force.

While Islamic condemnations of homosexuality have textual basis, there are other issues that are vague, and one of these is the permissibility of celebrating birthdays.

For the secular mind, such an issue is a non issue. But for the Islamic mind, anything God commands and prohibits, irrespective of how trivial it is, has efficacy. Take for instance, the prohibition of eating porcine products, a most insignificant law if there ever was one — it is perhaps the most universally adhered to by both pious and non-practicing Muslims. Because God forbade it, Muslims stay away from it.

The secular mind cannot understand this triviality. How can God be so pedantic, and command something that has no obvious benefit? At first glance, the Islamic mind does not indulge in such sophistry, merely acting as apologists and pronouncing the maxim that if God commands, we obey.

The problem is that with the death of the Prophet, there is much that remains vague as to what God commanded and prohibited. So Muslim scholars throughout Islamic history embarked on a legalistic drive to construct God’s mind, sometimes off the most pithy and inconsequential of statements. Often this leads to absurdities on reasoning justified under the guise of religious obligation.

In the above video, Menk falls into this trap. The celebration of birthdays is controversial with many scholars arguing its impermissibility, and listeners touting this point of view. One reason for its impermissibility is because there is an absence of evidence that the Prophet undertook such a celebration and it would be an innovation for us to do so. Also, by celebrating birthdays Muslims are resembling the disbelievers.

Menk does not argue these points of view. Instead, he points out that birthdays have pagan origins. Candles used on birthday cakes were once used by pagans to stop nature killing inhabitants during the freezing winters in Europe.

Thus the linear logic is the following: candles were used by pagans to follow pagan customs — in a secular world, this has been appropriated — However, it has pagan roots — therefore Muslims cannot celebrate birthdays.

For many Muslims, this is highly persuasive. Pagan antecedents are red flags. Yet in the Muslim quest to be pure of foreign influence, Muslims often forget the pagan characteristics of their own religion. The most striking of all Muslim practices is the circumambulation of a bricked cube (the Kaaba) and the prostration to it. While Muslims will argue it is symbolic, it visually appears that Muslims are prostrating to an inanimate object in the same way that a Hindu prostrates to Ganesh.

What makes it less idol worship is God’s commandments, clear statements ordering mankind to undertake such acts while remembering that the object of worship is not the cube but God that lies beyond it. The abstraction of such a philosophy does not detract from the idolatrous nature of the act itself, but Muslims like to argue that it does.

Indeed, what Muslims would be aghast by is if people genuinely worshiped the Kaaba, and believed it is the Kaaba that holds power. Here the object is inhered with a power it does not have.

Similarly, and countering directly Mufti Menks point of view on birthdays, if one blew out candles believing the candles and the act itself to have the power to protect one from death in the way the pagans thought to be true, that would be a form of idolatry. However, if one blows out candles in order to celebrate someones birthday, there is no idolatrous intention. The question for naysayers is where is the direct legal proof for that act to be invalid?

Simply put, there isn’t any proof. But Islamic scholars have a tendency to take a principle of Islamic law and a foreign practice, make tenuous connections, then amplify the invalidity of the act itself. It is certainly impermissible in Islam to partake in idolatrous worship. It is certainly true that the Prophet did not celebrate peoples birthdays, but just because contemporary Muslims do things the Prophet did not do, does not make the act impermissible. Otherwise, one falls into absurdity (like, it would be impermissible to drive a car or browse the internet, or type a blog)

By attempting to justify the impermissibility of birthdays by arguing its pagan origins, scholars serve to aggrandize trivialities and make God far more overbearing than perhaps he should be. Of course, Islam depicts a domineering divinity, but for post-Prophet Muslims seeking to get closer to God in a secular society, taking trivialities and having an Islamic opinion about them creates a Muslim community that is frigid, distant and uncompromising.

Maybe that is what God wants. But in the absence of his revelation, how can we be sure? Using the law to make tenuous links can create a law that is more man made in its reasoning. In which case why should any Muslim follow a scholar when really it is a exposition of an idiosyncratic point of view?

That is fundamentally the problem with the legal reasoning that occurs among many scholarly circles — it is sometimes difficult to determine what is actually from God and what is legal speculation, and that line is very fine. To argue an opinion is incontrovertibly Islamic and from God must be absolutely watertight. Far too often scholars fail to see their opinions are not.

Menk couches his diatribe against birthdays by emphasising there is what Islam and God says, and there is what secular society says… and Muslims follow God. This is true. Unfortunately, God’s law is not absolute and clear for many issues. To state there is proof for the impermissibility of birthdays is a contravention of ones obligations as a scholar to locate principles and laws upon which God’s law can be constructed, and to step back when things are vague. Like all laws, Islamic law has its vagaries; yet many scholars confidently assert that the Shari’a is absolute, perfect and applicable for ALL situations. It is not, especially in the incredible amount of gray areas confronted by moderns today that were hardly experienced by pre-modern individuals. This is something forgotten by Muslim evangelicals, and it can lead to fundamentalism in the name of God, when really its fundamentalism in the name of man.