Is It Permissible as a Baker to Take Orders for Non-Islamic Celebrations?

Answered by Ustadh Salman Younas

Question

If I operate a cake and confectionery business and my customers asked me to prepare a cake celebrating Diwali or their gay marriage, am I sinful in providing them with this service?

Answer

The general rule is that this would be permitted. This is because the activity you are engaged in, namely baking a cake, is in itself permissible and does not entail directly assisting another party in sin.

However, it would not be permitted to inscribe the cake with messages that explicitly and unambiguously celebrate the impermissible. Thus, decorating a cake with the slogan “Happy Pride Day” should be avoided.

There are certain expressions that are more ambiguous, however, such as “Happy Diwali” or “Merry Christmas.” While they have religious connotations to them, they are also often used as a more secular greeting to refer to a particular day, event, or season without the actual intent to celebrate or approve of a specific theology. It may be better to avoid these, but I cannot confidently say they reach the level of impermissibility as the expression “Happy Pride Day.”

For more see:
Assisting in Sin

[Ustadh] Salman Younas
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Ustadh Salman Younas credits two things with inspiring his journey as a student of knowledge:  Shaykh Faraz Rabbani instilled in him a love of the sacred sciences with rare-seen balance and knowledge, and reading about the lofty states of the spiritually realized made clear to him the reality of sacred knowledge and its purpose. Born and raised in New York, Ustadh Salman Younas graduated from Stony Brook University with a degree in Political Science and Religious Studies. After studying the Islamic sciences online and with local scholars in New York, Ustadh Salman moved to Amman.  There he studies Islamic law, legal methodology, belief, hadith methodology, logic, Arabic, and tafsir.

His teachers include Shaykh Faraz Rabbani, Shaykh Salah Abu’l Hajj, Shaykh Ashraf Muneeb, Shaykh Ahmad Hasanat, Shaykh Hamza Karamali, Shaykh Ahmad Snobar, Shaykh Ali Hani, Shaykh Hamza Bakri, Ustadh Rajab Harun, and others. Ustadh Salman’s personal interests include research into the fields of law/legal methodology, hadith, theology, as well as political theory, government,  media, and ethics. He is also an avid traveler and book collector. He currently resides in Amman with his wife.