anything sinful. The second condition of the category of forbidden, according to al-Fakihani, was when committing of transgressions entered into the practice, such as “singing–with full bellies–accompanied by instruments of idleness like drums and reed flutes, with the meeting of men with young boys and male persons with attractive women–either mixing with them or guarding them–, just like dancing by swinging and swaying, wallowing in lust and forgetting of the Day of Doom.” He also said, “And likewise the women, when they come together and there lend their high voices during the reciting with sighing and singing and thereby during the declaiming and reciting disobey the law and neglect His word: ‘Verily, your Lord is on a watchtower’ (Sura 89:14).” He further said, “Nobody with civilized and courteous manners approves of this. It is only pleasing to people whose hearts are dead and do not contain few sins and offenses.” Finally, he said that the month where the Prophet was born was also the month in which he died, and so implied that joy and happiness in that month are not more appropriate than sadness in that month. Fellow Egyptian Maliki Ibn al-Haj al-Abdari also considered Mawlid as a blameworthy innovation that was either makruh or haram, who added that the celebration was never practiced by the Salaf. However Ibn al-Haj affirms the auspicious qualities of the month of the Mawlid in the most effusive terms and considers Muhammad's date of birth as a particularly blessed time of the year. The Maliki scholar Al-Shatibi considered Mawlid an illegitimate innovation. The Andalusian jurist Abu 'Abd Allah al-Haffar (d. 1408) opposed Mawlid, noting that had the Sahaba celebrated it then its exact date would not be a matter of uncertainty. The former Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz, along with Hammud ibn 'Abd Allah al-Tuwayjiri (d. 1992), another Saudi scholar, in their opposition also argued that there were many worthy occasions in Muhammad's life which he never commemorated, such as the revelation of the first verses of the Qur'an, the Night Journey and the hijra. In 1934, the minister of education in Egypt criticized the "useless stories" which filled Mawlid poetry, as he believed these were incompatible with a modern and scientific viewpoint that represented Muhammad on a more sober level. Similar criticism arose in 1982 when a chairman of the Mecca-based Orthodox Muslim Organization Rabita declared celebrations of