It is the twelfth of April, already, in the Hijri count and Sufi Muslims over the world celebrate the birthdate of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW), this month, starting last week. For the next five months, organs, institutions, little schools and bid and small households will hold their own festivities at their chosen dates, in their own way, until Ramadan.
The goal is to vary the dates so the events do not clash and so guests can attend most occasions, to fetch different accounts of anecdotes and untold or retold events in the life of the celebrant. These feats are in honour, respect and love for the Prophet, whose evolution is the only reason this world is running and of life of all humans and all creations despite the many atrocities, like, say, a neighbour’s possible return of hate and evil to a neighbour’s possible previous kindness.
The feats and the accounts of the good of the best man ever should have healed the world, if only the guardians of our affairs demand exemplary living based on the qualities we talk about in the prophet. Instead they occasions scare even the faithful guilty of claiming traditions of the Prophet on lips only.
The feats are strong reminders of everything Muhammad, everything he stands for, everything he ever did or said and are strong reasons against the man in the world today that take his mercy but drops his lessons in their lives. That is perhaps the reason for the ranting of the guilty opponents of the feat who would rather debase the whole notion of the feat just to get the cognitive consonance to justify the antiMuhammadan values they enjoy and enforce.
All good is the cardinal of all prophets in history and the Prophet Muhammad only sealed them with the firebrand of his seal of, and best of, conducts. It suffices the world then to unite in competition for, and in, best conducts of the man and the world would be different from how it looks.
But nay, the celebrations do not include that and as long as we mark Maulid just for the name of it and not for the essence of it, then the challenges of the world remain on the necks of those who profess him but deny his sacrifice, endurance, patience, human respect, tolerance, help and assistance of the poor, the needy.
During last week’s grand events across the country, the President and other political leaders asked Nigerians to emulate the character and good conducts in the lifetime of the celebrant. This is a routine now, just as they ask the people to emulate the life of Prophet Ibraheem during the Eidhul Adha and to take up the steadfastness of Ramadhaan to next year during the Eidul Fitir.
All my life, this routine went on but without significant improvements and only with more poverty, deaths, killing, deterioration in the standard of life and living of, particularly, the Muslim. Why? The intervening macro and micro system variables are cruel but the reasons are personal.
They are mainly the intent and consent of the individual Muslim to idle in the waters of reluctance, materialism and bandwagon effects in gross submission to the processes of dialectical materialism and all its effect. Even Marxists whose ideas Islam condemns have made more efforts against the evil forces of denial of rights and privileges and the reinforcement of self-corrupting parameters than Muslims do.
The other reason which is not enough for the Muslim’s wantedness above is poverty, which has been used as, and remains, an instrument of intimidation, enslavement and subjugation to the corrupting economic systems and subsystems as well as spanners and screwdrivers for agents of such systems who make and mar even resilient targets among nations, states, areas and persons.
But then the evil forces, many a times spearheaded by agents within Islam – persons you consider close in sisterhood and you share much with who can do anything in apostasy to impinge on the prophetic doctrine of modesty, share of wealth and use of the little you have to make impact on the needy – are actually inhuman and cruel. Yet, they cannot be, there cannot be, any justification for the level of derailment of the life of the Muslim.
One of the great, revered lessons of the prophet is his remarkable self-finishing but unpopular at public functions in Nigeria, prayer, “Oh Lord, make me live poor, make me die poor and raise me among the poor”. The prayer is a hard reading or even mentioned at such celebrations because it contravenes the lifestyles of many Muslims today.
For a man who was offered the mountains of Mecca as gold if he wanted but refused, the reason of poverty to give in to every bit of the corrupt titbits is a betrayal of the lessons he passed down and we only celebrate on the lips. Those lessons are the source, today, of every humanitarian value that is used to change the gray areas of the sick world to no avail.
Prophet Muhammad’s great example has been usurped more by western Christians and even Jews than Muslims. Their lives and systems work in direct tandem with the teachings and qualities of the Prophet as promised to them. He is a mercy to everyone in the world.
That was what forced one Islamic scholar who once visited Europe and said on return, “I have seen Islam without Muslims in Europe and here are Muslims in Arabia and Africa without Islam.”
Maulid will not make sense and it will continue to attract criticism from selfish quarters of agents of the plot for global domination and control of the socioeconomic systems as long as it remains a celebration on lips only, of the qualities and amazing, life-changing anecdotes about the lifetime of the Prophet. Muslims must learn to live the examples of the Prophet, must try in their true best to remain resolute and determined, in spite of the evil forces and the challenges.
We cannot continue to pay eye- and lip-service to matters relating to the life of the Prophet of the world and its mercy. The recitations must invite the presence of Allah and His Messenger to the fore of the celebrations in order to approve the genuine intent and motives of the stages of the feats and how they can keep souls awake a year round.
That is the only way to find additional reasons, reinforce the sanctity, double the bounty of Allah’s pleasure and that of His Messenger, invite and attract more interest in the annual feat, expand the vault of hearts in love of the Prophet, and put a final seal on the lips of leftists on the wrong side of the divide. Maulid Mubarak.
Hassan Alhaji Hassan can be contacted on 08032829772/08050551220 (text only with full names and address)a[email protected]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect WikkiTimes’ editorial stance.
