58. What Is Bidah?

Bidah is an important concept in Islam. 

Literally it means “innovation”.

Bidah in the religious context means introducing new practices, rituals or rules for worship or making changes in the actual ones, introducing or changing principles in faith, making lawful things unlawful and making unlawful things lawful.

Innovations in worldly matters, like scientific innovations, are acceptable. This include even things like translations of Quran, tafseers (Quran exegesis), Hadith collection and classification, deriving and codifying principles of jurisprudence, madhabs, use of loud speakers in mosques etc. However innovation within the religion is seen as a sin in Islam, as I had indicated on the post on Tawassul.

Prophet Muhammad salallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam  stated as such:

“Whoever innovates something in this matter of ours [i.e., Islam] that is not a part of it, will have it rejected.” (Bukhari 2550, Muslim 1718 )

In addition, the Quran states:

" ..This day, I have perfected your religion for you, completed My favor upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion.”( 5:3)

Hence religion has been completed with Prophet Muhammad salallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam  and so there is no need of addition and deletion in it. Prophet Muhammad salallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam  stresses this aspect here: "There is nothing that Allah ordered you with except that I have ordered you with it, and there is nothing that Allah forbade you from except that I have forbidden you from it" [Bayhaqee]

The following Hadith is oft-quoted in Friday Sermons:

"The best speech is the Book of Allah and the best guidance and example is that of Muhammad salallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam , and the worse of all things are the newly invented things (in the religion), for every innovation is a error and a misguidance." (Muslim) "…Every innovation is a going astray and every going astray is in the fire." (Tirmidhi)

Bidah is strongly condemned in several Hadiths. This is understandable as Bidah has the potential to alter and mutilate the true face, message and spirit of Islam, affect its homogeneity, and promote sectarianism.

Once Prophet salallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam came across three men, who offered to follow their own Bidah as a part of their eagerness to draw closer to Allah. One said that he will pray the whole nights for the rest of his life, one claimed that he will fast every day in the future and the third one said that he will never marry. The Prophet salallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam  strongly disapproved all of these and urged them to follow his own life model, reminding them that he himself was the best among all mankind.

As mentioned at the beginning, Bidah is disallowed only for religious affairs; and this is well-supported by the following Hadith.

Once Prophet Muhammad salallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam  came across some people doing artificial pollination of palm trees. Due to some reason he disliked the idea and commented that it would be better not to do any pollination at all. 

However for the following year the harvest was poor. When he came to know about this Prophet Muhammad salallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam  admitted his limitation of knowledge regarding secular affairs and said: “If a question relates to your worldly matters, you would know better about it, but if it relates to your religion, then to me it belongs.” (Musnad Ahmad, hadith no. 12086; and Sunan Ibn Maja, hadith no. 2462)

It is not hard to appreciate that the reason why the previous communities of scriptures (Jews, Christians etc) deviated from the path of God, in the Islamic perspective, was due to introduction of such Bidahs. Prelacy, asceticism, monasticism, celibacy, saint worship etc are major Bidahs in previous religions. They in fact even changed their scriptures and morals beyond recognition.

"But the Monasticism which they invented for themselves, We did not prescribe for them" (57:27)

However there are voices in Muslim community too supporting Bidah directly and indirectly. Common Bidahs include

1. Mawlid: Celebrating the birth of Prophet Muhammad salallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam (12th day of Rabee' al-Awwal in the Hijra Calendar).

2. Conversing the intention for worship (Niyyat) in words, rather than in mind as it should be.

3. Offer Quran recitations or other chanting in congregation

4. Reciting Fatihah (First chapter of Quran) in times of celebration or death

5. Hiring people to recite the Qur'aan at the time of someone’s death

6. Celebrating ascension of Prophet (Israa wa Al-Miraj) and Hijrah (Prophet’s migration to Mecca).

7. Mourning the martyrs of Badr on the 17th day of Ramadan

8. Mourning the martyrdom of Hussain and his family on Muharram

9. Major Bid'ah include building monuments on graves, making graves as mosques, and visiting graves for blessings.

In fact it can be seen that many of these Bidahs has led to major deviations in Islam, including grave worship, spiritual abuses by the clergy and attributing divine qualities to the Prophet and even the clergy.