After ‘Asr Salah on Wednesday, 19 Dhul Qa’dah 1447 A.H., Shaykh ‘Awwamah (hafizahullah) spoke about the importance of using the Hijri calendar for Muslims.

Shaykh (hafizahullah) said:

“Ahmad Taymur Pasha (rahimahullah) [born and passed away – 1348 A.H./1940 – in Egypt ] was a man of Kurdish descent and took immense pride in his Islamic identity. Allah had blessed Ahmad Taymur with affluence, and since he had no offspring, he used the wealth to purchase countless ancient manuscripts, forming an enormous library and amassing a treasure trove of knowledge. It is said that his library consisted of several thousand manuscripts, 7000 of which were in the authors’ own handwriting!
Additionally, he would deposit his money in the bank, not seeking to increase it by unlawful usurious means, but as a safety deposit. When an official decision was made for banks to transition to using the Gregorian calendar as a replacement for the Hijri calendar, Ahmad Taymur put his foot down and refused to comply, asserting that he would accept nothing but Hijri dates. The bank administration pressed him to reconsider, but he did not submit to their demands. Eventually, the administration officially exempted Ahmad Taymur from the mandate of using the Gregorian calendar, and Ahmad Taymur continued using the Hijri calendar without anyone batting an eye.”

Shaykh (hafizahullah) then shared that Shaykh ‘Abdul Fattah Abu Ghuddah (rahimahullah) also adamantly refused to use the Gregorian calendar. In fact, he would not even write “هـ” (A.H.) after a date, since doing so implicitly validates the existence of an alternative: the “م” (C.E.) in the Gregorian calendar. Once, during his days of studying at Azhar University, Shaykh ‘Abdul Fattah (rahimahullah) received a letter from one his acquaintances, a well-known scholar from Aleppo. In the letter, the scholar wrote the date according to the Gregorian calendar. Shaykh ‘Awwamah (hafizahullah) quoted his teacher’s (Shaykh ‘Abdul Fattah’s) response to the letter, in which he wrote:

أنا رجل مسلم وتكتب بتاريخ ميلادي؟!

“I am a Muslim, but you write to me using the Gregorian date?!”

Shaykh ‘Awwamah said: “A person may wonder, why such staunchness (تشدد)?”
He then said:

ما هو أمر: (هـ) و(م)، الأمر: هلال وصليب!

“This is not a matter of [‘A.H.’] or [‘C.E.’], but rather a matter of the crescent and the cross.”

Shaykh (hafizahullah) then recalled that 52 years ago, he had a friend in Aleppo who was studying philosophy at the Damascus University. Among the books he was reading at the time was a study of Ibn Rushd’s philosophical thought by a Christian Lebanese author. Shaykh flipped through the book and was appalled to see that in the section surveying different writers and scholars, the author had put a cross instead of the letter “م” at the end of every Gregorian date! He said that at the very least, every page in that section had nearly four crosses on it!”

Comment

While Muslims residing in the modern world or in Western countries may require the use of the Gregorian date for certain purposes, preference should be given to the Islamic Hijri calendar, as far as possible.
May Allah inspire us all.

13/05/2026| 25/11/1447