Answering the invitation and its conditions

Authored by Ibrahim Ali Al-Ubaid Introduction All praise is due to Allah. We praise Him, seek His help, and ask for His forgiveness. We seek refuge in Allah from the evil of ourselves and our wrongdoings. Whomever Allah guides, none can misguide, and whomever He misguides, none can guide. I bear witness that there is no deity but Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger. {O you who have believed, fear Allah as He should be feared and do not die except as Muslims} (1) {O mankind, fear your Lord, who created you from a single soul and created from it its mate, and dispersed from both many men and women. And fear Allah, through whom you ask one another, and the wombs. Indeed, Allah is ever over you an Observer} (2) {O you who have believed, fear Allah and speak words of appropriate justice. He will then amend for you your deeds and forgive you your sins. And whoever obeys Allah and His Messenger has certainly attained a great attainment} (3) To proceed, الدعوات (invocations or calls) have increased in this era, and many people are in difficulty due to not knowing whether their response is obligatory or recommended, and they do not know what the consequences are, whether the invocation is for a wedding, an engagement, a sacrifice, hosting a guest, or others. This is due to a lack of knowledge of the conditions that, if fulfilled, make responding obligatory or recommended—whether these conditions relate to the caller, the called, or the invocation itself. Therefore, there is a pressing need to clarify the ruling on this matter, along with gathering the conditions for responding to an invitation or the reasons for not responding, in a separate treatise. This was extracted from the books of scholars. I wished to contribute to clarifying the ruling on this matter, its conditions, and discussing the various opinions, their evidence, and their evaluation. I named it "Responding to Invitations and Their Conditions," and I placed it in the introduction, two chapters, and a conclusion.