Birthdays still get a fair shake despite Saudi ban

When Hala al Masaad invited her girlfriends over to celebrate her 18th birthday with cake and juice, the high school student was stepping into an unusual public debate. Is celebrating birthdays un-Islamic? Saudi Arabia's most senior Muslim cleric recently denounced birthday parties as an unwanted foreign influence, but another prominent cleric declared they were okay.

That has left Masaad with mixed feelings about her low key celebration last month. She loves birthday parties, she says, because they make her feel that she has "moved from one stage of life to another." "But I sometimes feel I'm doing something haram," she said sheepishly.

The Saudi ban on birthdays is in line with the strict interpretation of Islam followed by the conservative Wahhabi version of Hanbali Islam to which the kingdom adheres. All Christian and even most Muslim feasts are also prohibited because they are considered alien customs the Saudi clerics don't sanction.

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