As Halloween comes around, some Muslim parents will enquire once again into the shar’i permissibility of allowing their children to dress up in costumes and join in activities such as trick-or-treating. We could get into a long-winded and technical breakdown on what it means to participate in a festival that includes enthusiastically dressing up as Shaitan & Co (regardless of whether one’s child also does or does not) but I think most people, intuitively, can figure out what is appropriate for the people of imaan and followers of the Prophets.
So my point here isn’t to engage with Halloween, but with sentiments that are tangentially raised by some parents when asking me the question: “Is it permissible…because I don’t want the kids to feel left out and it’s good that they integrate/get involved…” So the two points parents reason with are: (1) Integration, and (2) feeling left out. Generally, it’s very important that Muslims integrate rather than segregate for a number of shar’i and political reasons (better explored elsewhere), and fitting in as much as possible (and as much as is feasible in accordance with the shari’ah) normalises people of faith in wider society and helps young believers develop a sense of belonging to their people.