Hijri new year 1448: a deliberate editorial silence

Each year, when the crescent of the month of al-Muḥarram is sighted, part of the Muslim community shares greeting messages, dedicated supplications for "the new year", and sometimes nightly gatherings or sermons specifically built around this theme. On Deen Coach, we make a different choice. We do not publish a greeting card, nor a ritual invocation for 1 Muḥarram, nor a worship program specifically tied to that day. This is not an oversight, and even less a contempt for the sacred month: it is a methodological editorial position that this article calmly lays out.

Our framework is well known and stable: the methodology of Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jamāʿah, according to the understanding transmitted by the Salaf al-Ṣāliḥ. This framework gives us two simple principles which, together, explain both our silence on celebrations and our commitment to honor the month.

The origin of the hijrah and of the Islamic calendar

The hijrah (al-hijrah) refers to the migration of the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ from Makkah to Madīnah, the founding event that marks the birth of a Muslim community endowed with a public framework of life. This event did not, by itself, institute a feast: the Sunnah never established an annual commemoration of the hijrah, neither on the exact day of departure nor on the day of arrival in Madīnah.

The institution of the Hijri calendar came later, under the caliphate of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (raḍiyallāhu ʿanhu). The narrative is preserved notably in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (Kitāb Manāqib al-Anṣār): pressed by the administrative needs of the Muslim state, ʿUmar consulted the Companions about a reference point. Several proposals were considered, and the choice fell on the hijrah as year zero, because it clearly distinguishes truth from error in the trajectory of the community. The month of Muḥarram was placed at the head of the calendar.

What matters for our point: the Hijri calendar is a time-measurement tool instituted by the Companions, not a ritual act. Counting years from the hijrah is licit, useful, even necessary to fix the religious acts tied to the lunar calendar (fasting, zakāt, ḥajj). But this measurement tool was not, in the Sunnah, accompanied by an annual feast.

The status of Muḥarram, a sacred month

Allāh says in the Quran:

The number of months with Allāh is twelve [as ordained] in the Book of Allāh on the day He created the heavens and the earth. Four of them are sacred. That is the upright religion.

Sūrat at-Tawba (9), verse 36.

The four sacred months (al-ashhur al-ḥurum) are, according to classical exegesis and the ḥadīth of the Prophet ﷺ reported in the canonical collections: Dhū al-Qaʿdah, Dhū al-Ḥijjah, al-Muḥarram, and Rajab. The month of al-Muḥarram therefore holds a particular place. It is honored by Allāh ﷻ, and several classical commentators have recalled, on the basis of verse 36 of at-Tawba, that injustice committed during these months is aggravated — hence the Qur'anic formula "فلا تظلموا فيهنّ أنفسكم" ("do not be unjust to yourselves during them").

The Prophet ﷺ explicitly emphasized fasting during this month. It is narrated from Abū Hurayrah (raḍiyallāhu ʿanhu) in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim that the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ said:

The best fasting after Ramaḍān is the fasting of the month of Allāh, al-Muḥarram. And the best prayer after the obligatory prayer is the night prayer.

Note the phrasing: "shahr Allāh al-Muḥarram", the month of Allāh al-Muḥarram. This is an emphasis the Prophet ﷺ reserved for very few months. It is enough to understand that this month is a high spiritual moment for the believer.

Recognizing the sacredness of Muḥarram is therefore not optional. What we will not do is derive from it rituals that the texts did not establish.

What the Sunnah did not establish for 1 Muḥarram

Here is what, to our knowledge, has not been reported from the Prophet ﷺ, nor from the Companions (raḍiyallāhu ʿanhum), nor from the Tābiʿūn:

• a specific prayer for 1 Muḥarram,
• a ritual supplication for entering the Hijri year,
• a particular fast on 1 Muḥarram as such (the merit applies to fasting the month in general, not to this precise day),
• an instituted sermon to mark the change of year,
• codified liturgical greetings to be formulated on that day.

It is this absence that grounds our silence. The methodological rule of the Salaf is constant: a ritual act needs textual proof (dalīl). Absence of proof does not, by itself, authorize the institution of a ritual. The Prophet ﷺ lived through several new lunar years after the hijrah, his Companions lived for several decades after him, and the Tābiʿūn lived after them. None of these generations, valued by the texts, made 1 Muḥarram a religious feast.

This does not mean that a Muslim commits a serious sin if they exchange a kind message with a relative when the year changes. The practical question is the status one gives to this exchange. If it is a simple social gesture, a human attention, with no cultic dimension, several contemporary scholars have indicated that there is no harm in it, on the condition of not making it an obligation, a liturgical habit, or a marker of religious belonging. If, on the other hand, it is elevated into a religious rite (with a fixed invocation, a fixed greeting, a belief that it brings one closer to Allāh as such), then we have slipped into what the Salaf warned against: innovation in religion.

Shaykh Ibn ʿUthaymīn (raḥimahullāh), in his Majmūʿ Fatāwā wa Rasāʾil, had the occasion to answer this question: he did not validate the institution of a religious celebration for 1 Muḥarram, and referred back to the general principle of the sufficiency of the Sunnah. The fatāwā of al-Lajnah al-Dāʾimah converge in the same direction.

Our editorial silence is therefore a faithfulness to the Sunnah as it has reached us, not a disregard for the event of the hijrah nor a rejection of the sacred month.

Recommended deeds during the sacred months

If we do not celebrate 1 Muḥarram, what do we concretely do during this month? The Sunnah and the practice of the Salaf orient us toward simple, sourced, deeply useful acts:

• Preserve the sacredness of the month: avoid all the more any injustice against oneself or others, in line with the warning of verse 36 of at-Tawba ("do not wrong yourselves during them").
• Increase fasting throughout the month, without fixing a precise day as a ritual entry of the year. The merit of fasting the month is reported by Muslim, as cited above.
• Prepare for the fast of ʿĀshūrāʾ (10 Muḥarram), with the 9th if possible (Tāsūʿāʾ). We dedicate a separate article to this authentically reported fast.
• Increase your usual supererogatory acts: night prayer, dhikr, Quran reading, charity. No invention of new dhikr, simply more diligence in what is already recommended all year round.
• Conduct a personal spiritual check on the past year, without making it a collective rite. Personal spiritual review is an interior act recommended at all times; the change of year may just be a practical trigger.

That is what, in our eyes, honors the month without distorting it.

The Salaf's rule on emerging practices

The methodology that guides this editorial silence is not a contemporary invention. It is the application of a principle the Salaf formulated repeatedly, and which the classical imams (Mālik, ash-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, on the basis of ḥadīths themselves reported in the collections) relayed under various formulations:

Whatever was not religion on that day is not religion on this day.

This statement, attributed to Imām Mālik (raḥimahullāh) in several classical works, sums up a simple logic. The religion was completed during the lifetime of the Prophet ﷺ, in line with the verse of sūrat al-Māʾidah, verse 3: "This day I have perfected for you your religion". If a cultic practice was not religion at the time of the Prophet ﷺ and of his Companions (raḍiyallāhu ʿanhum), it cannot become so today by the mere force of social usage.

That is why we apply this rule to 1 Muḥarram. No Companion instituted a greeting card for this day, nor a codified duʿāʾ for the year's passing. So we do not either.

This rule is not a rejection of technical modernity. We publish a blog, we ship an app, we send notifications: none of these tools existed in the time of the Prophet ﷺ. But these tools are means, not cults. The rule applies specifically to acts of worship (ʿibādāt), for which the principle of tawqīf (limitation to the texts) applies strictly, while means (wasāʾil) follow the principle of default permission.

Distinguishing these two registers allows us to hold a coherent posture: conservative on cultic content, open on diffusion vehicles.

Deen Coach's editorial posture

Concretely, here is what you will not see, and what you will see, in the app and on this blog at the time of 1 Muḥarram:

This choice is not a critique of the intentions of those who celebrate. We know many do so out of love for the Prophet ﷺ and attachment to the event of the hijrah. Our conviction is that one honors the Sunnah better by sticking to what it has established.

FAQ

Is wishing "happy Hijri new year" to a relative forbidden? The precise qualification depends on the form and intention. A simple kind message, without a ritual formula, without the belief that it constitutes a cultic act, does not fall in the same category as an innovated ritual. Several contemporary scholars (notably Ibn ʿUthaymīn and the Lajnah Dāʾimah) have nuanced this: by default, it is better to abstain; if one answers someone who initiates such a greeting, one may do so with restraint, without making it a habit or a religious norm. Wa Allāhu aʿlam.

Why not use 1 Muḥarram as a pedagogical moment? Because religious pedagogy, in the way of the Salaf, is inseparable from the form of the rite. If one associates a teaching with a date that the Sunnah has not distinguished for that teaching, one contributes to fixing in minds a ritual association that ends up becoming a usage. It is better to treat the content (the sacred months, the hijrah, the calendar) at any moment of the year, freed from the date.

Is the Hijri calendar itself licit? Yes, and it is even preferable to use it as the reference calendar for religious acts. The caliphate of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (raḍiyallāhu ʿanhu) instituted it after consultation with the Companions. It is the measurement tool, not a ritual object.

And if I see my family or local community celebrating? Stay gentle. The tone of this article is not a call to correct others loudly, nor to interrupt gatherings. It is an internal framework for our editorial work. For your own relationships, live your conviction without harshness, share if asked, and refer specific cases to a qualified scholar.

What should be said in priority during Muḥarram? Three simple things: recognize that it is a sacred month (at-Tawba 9:36), fast what you can of the month (Muslim), prepare for ʿĀshūrāʾ.

In closing

To institute nothing where the Sunnah has instituted nothing is not a cold posture: it is a form of respect for the deposit. We know this silence stands out, especially against a notification calendar saturated with occasions. On Deen Coach, this silence is deliberate, methodological, and it is paired with positive work: highlighting the acts that the Sunnah has explicitly established during this month, starting with the fast of ʿĀshūrāʾ.

For any personal situation that requires a precise fatwā, we refer you to a qualified scholar of your region or to a recognized salafī teaching site.

Wa Allāhu aʿlam.