Islamic Wedding Dates: Which Months Are Actually Avoided.
The widely-observed rules about avoiding particular Islamic months are, according to the major fatwa bodies, exactly the kind of omen-reading Islam came to abolish.
The calendar
The Hijri calendar is lunar and, crucially, not deterministic. Month starts are set by local sighting or local calculation and the rules differ by country — Saudi Umm al-Qura, the Egyptian criterion and Turkey's Diyanet all give different answers, and month starts can spread across a 48-hour window.
The rules
- Ramadan
- The nikah contract is permitted. The walima is normally deferred, for the obvious practical reason.
- Muharram and Safar
- Widely avoided in practice, particularly Muharram among Shia communities for the mourning of Imam Husayn. Sunni fatwa bodies reject the avoidance as having no basis.
- Eid and the days of tashriq
- Practically excluded by the festivals themselves.
- Ihram
- The contract is invalid during ihram for the Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali schools; valid for the Hanafi. This affects pilgrims, not the calendar.
What can be worked out, and what cannot
A calendar can determine
- Gregorian to Hijri conversion, but only against a named convention, with a ±1 day margin
- Which convention your country follows
Only your local moon-sighting authority can decide
The actual start of the month. In South Asia, Ruet-e-Hilal decisions are made the evening before and no algorithm predicts them. Umm al-Qura is calculated but only reliable between 1937 and 2077.
A common claim, corrected
Marrying in Shawwal, Safar or Muharram brings bad luck.
IslamQA calls the Shawwal avoidance "one of the leftovers of the Jahiliyyah" and classifies it as tiyarah, reading omens, which is forbidden. The pre-Islamic aversion came from the month's name evoking camels' milk drying up. Al-Nawawi held that marrying in Shawwal is actually recommended. IslamWeb takes the same position on Muharram and Safar, and Turkey's Diyanet has explicitly debunked the folk rule against marrying between the two Eids — pointing out that the Prophet married in Shawwal, which is precisely that window.
None of this makes a family wrong for observing a custom. But it is worth knowing that the scholarly position and the popular practice point in opposite directions here.