How can bad bid’ah be recognized?

- What is good bid’ah and bad bid’ah? How can they be recognized?
- Can you write a list of good bid’ahs?

Dear Brother / Sister,

Bid’ah (innovation) lexically means something that did not exist before but was introduced later. Terminologically, it is something that abolishes any custom of Islam / Sunnah and replaces it with a new one.

Accordingly, a fork or a spoon is lexically a bid’ah. However, there are two forms of bid’ah terminologically:

First: A new custom that does not change a custom of Islam but is considered good by Muslims. Such as the practice of Umar (ra), who made it a custom to perform tarawih prayer in congregation.

Nevertheless, some scholars do not call this kind of bid’ah “bid’ah hasana = good innovation” and do not consider it a bid’ah.

Secondly: It is an innovation that goes against the spirit of Islam and abolishes a sunnah by replacing it.

This is the real bid’ah (innovation) that is a preparation for the journey to Hell. An example of it is to abolish the original call to prayer (adhan) and to replace it with something in a language other than Arabic.

The following remarks of Badiuzzaman Said Nursi regarding the issue are very good:

“New creations in the ordinances concerning worship are innovation, and since innovations are opposed to the verse اَلْيَوْمَ اَكْمَلْتُ لَكُمْ دِينَكُمْ (This day have I completed for you your religion), they are to be rejected., 

However, the recitations and invocations of the Sufi way are not innovations, on condition they originate in the Book and Sunna, and even if they differ in form and manner, their basis and principles do not oppose the Prophet’s (UWBP) practices or change them, they are not innovations. Certainly some scholars classed a number of these as innovations, but called them “commendable innovations”.(1)

Accordingly, turning the Quran into a Mushaf (book), performing tarawih prayer in congregation, building minarets and madrasas are examples of good bid’ahs, while building shrines over graves and putting candles on them are examples of bad bid’ahs.

According to this understanding, it is the bad bid’ah that is rejected in the hadiths.

In other words, according to the narrow definition, bid’ah is “a path in the religion of Islam that was invented after the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), that aims to increase the worship of Allah, that has the characteristic of adding to or subtracting from religion, and that appears to be similar to shari’ah practices”.(2)

The advocates of this view do not accept everything that emerged later but only those things that have a religious nature as bid’ah. Therefore, they do not include behaviors and attitudes of customs and traditions, changes brought about by daily life, technological inventions and innovations within the scope of the concept of bid’ah. As evidence for their view, they take the general statement of the narration, “If somebody innovates something which is not in harmony with our affairs, that thing is rejected.”(3)

Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali states that the meaning of the phrase “fi amrina (with our affairs)” in the text of the hadith is the religion of Islam and Shari’ah.(4)

References:

1) Lemalar, p. 56.
2) Yaran, “Bid’at”, DİA, VI, pp. 129-130; Shatibi, al-I’tisam, 25.
3) Bukhari, Sulh, 5; Muslim, Aqdiya, 17.
4) Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali, Abdurrahman b. Shihabuddin, Jamiul-Ulum wal-Hikam, (Thq. Mahir Yasin Fahl), Daru Ibn Kathir, Beirut, 2008, p. 156.

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