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What are the regulations concerning imitation of the West? Is everything modern and new that comes from them considered an imitation of them? And what are the criteria that determine something to be forbidden because it is an imitation of disbelievers?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

Imitating disbelievers is forbidden, based on the saying of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him): "Whoever imitates a people is one of them." This imitation can be in dress and certain actions. This Hadith has two implications: the minimum is the prohibition of imitating them, and it can even reach polytheism (Shirk). Imitating disbelievers is of two types: forbidden and permissible. The forbidden type is knowingly performing actions that are specific to the religion of disbelievers, which can be among the major sins or even disbelief (Kufr). The permissible type is performing an action that is not originally taken from disbelievers, but they also do it. It is not permissible to imitate the People of the Book in worldly matters except under specific conditions: that it is not one of their distinctive traditions or symbols, that it is not from their religious law, that our religious law does not have a specific ruling on it, that the conformity does not lead to violating a religious command, that the conformity is not on their holidays, and that the conformity is only according to necessity.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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