Christmas and New Year after my Conversion to Islam
I had a problem with Christmas celebration only in my first stages of conversion to Islam, which lasted about 6 months.
During that time I was seriously considering Islam, reading the Qur´an and Islamic literature, studying Muslims´ way of live. However, I was still not a Muslim. Before I completely converted to Islam, I still thought that I desperately needed to celebrate Christmas for the sake of my family, as for me it was a family party, not a Christian religious festival.
Christmas had a deep meaning to me mainly because I associated it with cozy family gatherings, eating delicious meals and exchanging presents. This was 2 years ago.
However, after I converted to Islam and started reading and learning more about my deen, I understood as well as I felt that I don’t need Christmas at all and Christmas gradually lost its charm and meaning to me.
Like anything else invented by humans and not by divine decree, non-Muslim festivals can lose its meaning very easily once the person gets disillusioned.
Islam is so beautiful because it works on the heart as well on the mind to transform the believer into a new being. As my knowledge and understanding for Islam grew, my distance from my old religion and old lifestyle grew too.
When the love to Islam increases, one automatically drops various non-Islamic stuff, including Christmas and new year and any other non-Muslim festivals In addition, over time,
I started developing a Muslim identity which made me realize that we Muslims have our own way, our own religion and our own festivals too. We Muslims are blessed to be granted a comprehensive religious system that gives us an explanation and guidance to every aspect of this as well as the next life.
Which sensible and grateful person would need to exchange or add anything useless and rebellious to the perfect system of Islam?!
We have our own two Eids, why do we need anything more?!
Moreover, we Muslims would not dare celebrate any non-Muslim festivals or try to be like the non-Muslims in any respect, if we realize the serious consequences of imitating the non-Muslims.
We all have heard the hadiths that he who imitates a people will be from among them on the Day of Judgment (Abu Daawood) and that the one who imitates people other than the Muslims is not from the Muslims and that we are warned not to imitate the Jews or the Christians (Tirmithi). So, how could I have kept on celebrating non-Muslim festivals after hearing this severe warning?
I don’t have many problems even with my non-Muslim family concerning the celebration of Christmas or any other non-Muslim festivals as they already understood I don’t celebrate with them.
This year they did not even greet me for Christmas! So, everything is possible with the help of Allah swt, Alhamdulillah, when a person has a sincere intention and a determination to be on the right path.
Sister Mariam
Dear Brothers and Sisters In sha Allah this story will help those of you with non Muslim families to realize that nothing is impossible to do.
Many converts to Islam have refused to take part in Christmas. Just like you love your family Sister Mariam also loves her family. Just like you do not like to disappoint or hurt your families feelings, Sister Mariam also does not like to disappoint or hurt her families feelings. She is Masha Allah is a very intelligent Sister. She studied Accountancy at the best University in her country. She was joint top in her class. When she began to wear Hijab fellow Muslims from a deviant group became angry with her and tried to convince her that she should not wear Hijab. However, she wanted to please Allah and not give in to pressure nor let herself be tricked by humans. So she kept wearing her scarf and even started to wear Niqab.
At Muslimconverts.com we have recieved many emails from Sisters and Brothers regarding Christmas. So I developed a whole section dealing with Christmas and other non Muslim events. In addition to this I asked the sister if she could write and article for this site on her experience of dealing with family during the Christmas period and Alhamdulillah the sister wrote a wonderful article and Jazaka Allah khair to her.
The only way a Muslim will succeed in achieving his or her goals is to put obedience to Allah and His Messenger( peace be on him) first. To be stubborn on it and show no kinds of weakness.
AbuUbaida
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