Dear Muslims! Fear Allah Ta’ala and know that the best of His bounties on you and the Ummah is that He sent to them Muhammadﷺ as the Last and Final Prophet and Messenger, after a prolonged time in which He did not send a Prophet. Allah guided mankind by sending Muhammad ﷺ with the straight path and the successful way and required them to follow and obey Him. Allah has made Muhammad ﷺ the light that enlightened the entire earth, after it had been engulfed with darkness, and a guide for mankind, after they fell prey to utter confusion. He is the great bounty and the tremendous gift that Allah has granted to His creation.
We are required to appreciate Allah for this tremendous bounty by striving hard to protect and preserve it. This can only be performed by obeying The Messenger of Allah ﷺ and imitating His Sunnah, while adhering to what he has commanded and refraining from what he has forbidden.
We are required to love Muhammad ﷺ more than we love our own selves, children, fathers and mothers.
Loving the Prophet ﷺ requires obeying him, following in his footsteps and avoiding what he has prohibited. Therefore, every act of worship must and should conform to the guidance that The Messenger ﷺ has established. Moreover, every act of worship that does not conform to the Prophet’s Sunnah is rejected, just as The Prophet ﷺ said:
“Whoever performs an act that does not conform to our matter (religion) then it is rejected.”
There are numerous Bid’ah (innovations) that misguided persons have invented, One of these Bid’ah is repeated every year, in the lunar month of Rabi’ AI-Awwal, when The Prophet’s ﷺ birthday is celebrated. We should assert that celebrating Mawlood or The Prophet’s birthday, is an evil Bid’ah that Alláh neither allowed nor legislated; those who invented it did so following their whims and desires. It is a Bid’ah because The Prophet ﷺ did not practice it in his Sunnah, nor did the Companions celebrate it, even though they are the best generation of this Muslim Ummah who sought all that is good and beneficial. To the contrary, the Bid ‘ah of Mawlood was started in the sixth century after the Hijrah to imitate the Christians who used to celebrate Jesus’ claimed birthday. The Prophet ﷺ sternly prohibited us from imitating the Christians in specific, when he said: Do not unduly praise me like the Christians unduly praised Jesus (Alayhi Asalaam).”
It is amazing that many of those who celebrate the Maulid do not even practice the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺnor refer to his teachings for judgment.
A true Mu’min must imitate The Prophet ﷺ and implement his teachings on all days, hours and minutes of their life, not just in one day that falls in a certain month!
We ask Alláh to guide us to adhere to The Quraan and The Sunnah of His Prophet ﷺ and the rightly guided Ulamaa (scholars).
Say (O Muhammad ﷺ to mankind): “If you (really) love Allah then follow me (i.e. the true Islam as shown in The Quran and the Sunnah), Allah will love you and forgive you of your sins. And Allah is Forgiving, Most Merciful.” (3:31)
