Re: Are baby showers haram?
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The examples you have given above are the necessities of life which again are halaal only if they dont't violate islamic principles....I don't see any correlation between a custom and activities of day to day life....still
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Using a computer and a car, wearing a lengha and eating a samosa are not really necessities of life :)
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If computers are used for enlightening ourselves and learning good things then their use is halaal and if they are used for watching porn then they are not
any clothing is halaal as long as it does not reveal the body itslef or its shape else it is haraam
samosas are halaal as long as no haraam ingredients are used in them
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Exactly. And the same can be said for baby showers as well. As long as there is nothing unIslamic taking place in it, it can be permissible. If there are unIslamic things happening in it, then obviously the case is different. I am not saying that a baby shower with a stripper and open bar is Islamic!
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Now coming to the "custom" of baby showers. We all might want to research the origin of this tradition or for that matter other customs like birthday parties etc...did our beloved prophet(SAW) celebrate his birthdays, leave alone cutting a cake on his(SAW) birthdays? When he (SAW) or his sahabas didn't then why should we?These are purely Western/Hindu traditions and we are blindly following. These traditions have become so common among us that if someone talks against it people start raising eye brows. Remember the hadith "whoever imitates a group he is from them" meaning that whoever imitates a group will be raised with them on the day of judgement and his hisaab would be done along with them.
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Again, I would refer you to the paper posted on culture and Islam
I attended a lecture by Dr Sherman Abdul Hakim Jackson a few months ago and he said something very interesting: "There is a difference between what is non-Muslim and non-Islamic. If something doesnt violate what Allah has commanded not to violate, it can be Islamic even if it is nonMuslim"
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BTW who is Dr Umar Faruq Abd-Allah? What institution has he earned his mufti course from (since he has passed a fatwa)? I have never heard of him and hence curious?
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He is a very well known and well respected scholar from North America. I will paste his bio below for you if you are interested
Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah (Wymann-Landgraf) is an American Muslim, born in 1948 to a Protestant family in Columbus, Nebraska. He grew up in Athens, Georgia, where both parents taught at the University of Georgia. Dr. Abd-Allah did his undergraduate work at the University of Missouri with dual majors in History and English Literature. In 1969, he won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and entrance to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York to pursue a Ph.D. program in English literature. Shortly after coming to Cornell, Dr. Abd-Allah read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which inspired him to embrace Islam in early 1970. In 1972, he altered his field of study and transferred to the University of Chicago, where he studied Arabic and Islamic Studies under Dr. Fazlur Rahman. Dr. Abd-Allah received his doctorate with honors in 1978 for a dissertation on the origins of Islamic Law, Malik's Concept of 'Amal in the Light of Maliki Legal Theory. From 1977 until 1982, he taught at the Universities of Windsor (Ontario), Temple, and Michigan. In 1982, he left America to teach Arabic in Spain. Two years later, he was appointed to the Department of Islamic Studies at King Abdul-Aziz University in Jeddah, where he taught (in Arabic) Islamic studies and comparative religions until 2000.
During his years abroad, Dr. Abd-Allah had the privilege of studying with a number of traditional Islamic scholars. He returned to Chicago in August 2000 to work as chair and scholar-in-residence of the newly founded Nawawi Foundation, a non-profit educational foundation. In conjunction with this position, he is now teaching and lecturing in and around Chicago and various parts of the United States and Canada, while conducting research and writing in Islamic studies and related fields.
Personally, for issues related to culture, customs and social norms, I believe we should turn to our own local scholars for advice, as opposed to ones sitting half way around the world, as they are aware of the context in which we are living. It is important for scholars to be versed in the CONTEXT, and not just the TEXT. Its like the muftis in some places who give "fatwas" that its haraam for a woman to wear pants, even if its just in her home, because its the dress of men and they should not imitate men. They are obviously not aware of the context of dress code for Muslims living in the west and hence their fatwa doesnt make any sense!
