Celebrating NYE means devil is working on you: Sydney sheik

Sydney sheik Feiz Mohammed has warned Muslims they should avoid festive celebrations — including New Year’s Eve and Christmas — and has attacked women’s rights groups, telling Islamic women to wear hijabs.

Sheik Feiz, who has a large online following with almost two million YouTube views, described non-Islamic festivals as leading to a path away from Allah.

“Any festivity or celebration built on other than Islam is a negative, prohibited festivity. We are not allowed to anticipate, participate, in any shape, manner or form,” he told supporters earlier this month. “When we finish our prayers, many Muslims you see them preparing themselves for their celebrations to come ... what are we going to do for New Year’s Eve tonight? Where are we going to go? Who are we going to watch? Where’s the best fireworks at?”

He said Muslims could be easily influenced by non-Muslims.

“If they do this — that’s the way you’ve got to do it. That means happiness, enjoyment, that means ecstasy, that means comfort, that means happiness, that means joy. That means relief. No, it does not — it means the devil is working on you,” he said.

The preacher, who speaks at Liverpool and Auburn Islamic centres in Sydney’s southwest and west, spoke about how Muslims traditionally were banned from leaving their homes during “non-Muslim celebrations”.

He suggested that if Muslims were drawn towards the celebrations, they were turning their backs on their religion. “If you believe this is accurate, is acceptable, is their right and (are) celebrating, you’re one of them,” he said.

“However, if you go on the belief ‘I just want to join in and have the fun, have a night out, enjoy myself, but I don’t believe in all this nonsense’ ... this is the path you continually ask Allah to keep away from — how can you participate? Where’s the logic in this?”

He said Muslims who celebrate non-Islamic festivities were “deaf, dumb and blind” for failing to stay true to Islamic teachings.

He also said if a hijab “shapes the body”, it unveiled the body “like she’s naked” and suggested Islamic women who did not properly wear Islamic clothing would not enter “paradise”.

“A woman wearing tight hijab, tight jeans, tight whatever they may be, is in fact wearing nothing. Haram. A woman wearing clothes that are transparent, you can see through them, haram. She must try her upmost to keep the eyes of men away from her.”

Sheik Feiz said people who wanted to “liberate” Muslim women from wearing the hijab would ultimately use them as “commodities”.

The Islamic leader, who has delivered sermons attacking Harry Potter and called for the beheading of Dutch politician Geert Wilders, has kept a low profile since returning to Australia in 2010 after a three-year study tour in Malaysia and Lebanon.

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