Partaking in a Thanksgiving Dinner: Permitted or Not?

Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Question: My non-Muslim parents have invited my family over for dinner on Thanksgiving. There will be other family members and old friends at the dinner and they all look forward to seeing me and my family and it is an opportunity for all of us to get together (as everyone is off work/school). My parents have volunteered to do whatever it takes to accommodate the attendance (no alcohol, no Thanksgiving rhetoric or decorations, a halal meal, etc.). Would it be permitted to partake in this?

Answer:

Walaikum assalam wa rahmatullah,

Regardless of its origins, given that the dinner is not an explicitly  religious  function and that it relates to immediate non-Muslim family members, it would be permitted to attend, especially when there are obvious benefits in attending and obvious harm in not doing so.

And Allah alone gives success.

Wassalam,
Faraz Rabbani