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Thanksgiving Dinner

Answered as per Hanafi Fiqh by Qibla.com

Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

My non-Muslim parents have invited my family over for dinner on Thanksgiving. There will be other family members and old friends at the dinner and they all look forward to seeing me and my family. My always understanding parents have volunteered to do whatever it takes to accommodate my family’s attendance (No alcohol, no Thanksgiving rhetoric or decorations, a halal meal, etc.). They just want my family to attend a dinner with friends and family and feel welcome.

Answer:
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

Walaikum assalam wa rahmatullah,

Regardless of its origins, given that the dinner is not an explicitly ‘religious’ function and that it relates to immediate non-Muslim family members, it would be permitted to attend, especially when there are obvious benefits in attending and obvious harm in not doing so.  

As for when the benefits and harms are not so clear, it would be better to avoid.

And Allah alone gives success.

Wassalam,

Faraz Rabbani

This answer was indexed from Qibla.com, which used to have a repository of Islamic Q&A answered by various scholars. The website is no longer in existence. It has now been transformed into a learning portal with paid Islamic course offering under the brand of Kiflayn.

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