Bid'ah & Common Mistakes by Muhammad S. Adly is a resource for Muslims seeking to understand and avoid innovations in religious practice that deviate from the authentic teachings of Islam. The book focuses on identifying and correcting the common errors believers encounter in their daily religious activities.
Why This Subject Is Uncomfortable and Necessary
Because most innovation is inherited rather than invented. Almost nobody sets out to add to the religion — they do what their family did, in good faith, and the practice arrived from somewhere they never thought to ask about.
That makes correction a delicate matter. Telling someone that what his grandmother did every year has no basis is not received as information.
The Principle Underneath
Acts of worship are established by evidence rather than by good intention. The Prophet ﷺ said that whoever introduces into this affair of ours something that is not from it will have it rejected — and that applies to sincere additions as much as careless ones.
The reasoning is that the religion was completed. To add is to imply it was not.
What Is Actually Covered
The common mistakes: practices around death and burial, additions to the prayer and to wudu, the marking of particular days and nights, amulets and objects of protection, and the small habitual errors most people have never had corrected.
Who It Is For
Any Muslim who wants to know that what he does has a basis. It should be read for oneself before it is used on anybody else.
About the Author
Shaykh Muhammad S. Adly is Director of the Islamic Center of Columbia, South Carolina. His books come out of decades of teaching new Muslims in masajid, in the Department of Corrections and in free college programs — and that shows in how they are written: plainly, from the beginning, assuming nothing.
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