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Abstract

The reformist movement initiated by the Waliullah family mainly focusing upon the prevailing rituals took a new turn in the last quarter of the twentieth century, when Sir Syed started his own movement against certain rituals under the banner of Tahzib ul Akhlāq (Mohammedan Social Reformer). Not only did the modernists, but also the traditional scholars joined his movement. The rationale for this article is the absence of any counter-narrative for this position in the religious discourse. Those who have worked upon this discourse have usually been focusing upon its permissibility, which has already been explained in Usool i Fiqh under the heading of Urf and Adaat. Right after the wave of secularization in the west, the crisis of spirituality and tradition forced sociologists to write about the functions of rituals and traditions in the formation of a healthy society. This article tries to evaluate the literature produced against the concept of rituals and re-establishes the importance of rituals and customs in an Islamic society by providing evidences from the texts of different schools of thought. Consequently, this article tries to establish a religious and sociological counter narrative for the significance of rituals and customs in an Islamic society.Keywords: