Our world, longing to grasp the noble Mawlid

It is the end of times, evil times; we live in a world where man is a wolf to man, where he envies, oppresses, exploits and devours.

When was it ever not like this? Is this not our tragedy as humanity? A pendulum operates in history, along which the world keeps swinging between better and worse. Just as this pendulum operates across the whole of human history, it can also operate within a society's own history and within an individual's own personal life. When we coincide with the pendulum's bad times, we can feel the world's soullessness and heartlessness down to our marrow. In a merciless, heartless and soulless world, we look for a voice, a light, a mercy that will be a heart and a soul for us.

Man is a being of perfect creation. He has been created within a perfect universe, with a perfect environment in which everything is designed in accordance with him, and with a perfect hardware and software. When man looks carefully at every detail of his own creation and of the harmony between it and the universe created, so to speak, to serve this creation, he cannot help but marvel. Within man's body there operates, unbeknownst to him, an intelligence of such perfection that he is heedless of it, knowingly or unknowingly. His body serves him outside his own will. Looking at his hand, his arm, his leg, his belly, his stature, man says "I," yet he has no contribution whatsoever to the formation of any of them. All of it has been "given" to him, "bestowed" upon him.

When sleep comes, he has no power to prevent it; when sleep flees, he has no power to sleep. He has no power to hold his breath, and with every breath he takes there is an extraordinary mechanism operating within his body outside his own control, with his heart, his spleen, his lungs, his kidneys, his stomach, his intestines, his brain, the blood in his veins, every single cell. He has no will with which, even if he wished, to stop any of them from working. When one organ does not work properly and smoothly, his life is thrown into disarray. Then he remembers that organ; otherwise he forgets. Sometimes he is helpless to heal the organ that reminds him of itself by malfunctioning; he sees that he has nothing in his hands, he realizes that these do not belong to him.

Yet calling this whole "beyond-his-grasp" complex being "I," he rushes to join, with his selfhood, the unbounded formation of the merciless world, the heartless world. He makes the world even more merciless, he falls into the delusion that sustenance comes from himself, and he steps forward with the claim of being different from and superior to others. In fact, everything he needs to know in order to find his way, in order to attain the secret of existence, has been placed before his eyes. He does not have to go very far to find these. It will suffice to read himself, his surroundings, the universe a little with this eye. But man holds back from reading. For this reason he loses his way on level ground. All of humanity pays the penalty for some people's losing their way, because the one who has lost his way generally loses the fact that he has lost his way as well. He becomes heedless of this fact, knowingly or unknowingly.

The Prophet is a manifestation of God's mercy and compassion, to those who have lost their way on level ground, against the merciless, rampant tyrants who try to make servants of themselves by spreading this bewilderment to others, in order to illuminate the world that they have made unlivable by drowning it in strife and corruption, and to show them the path of salvation.

We have lived through yet another anniversary of his blessed birth (pbuh). Almighty God sent prophets throughout history to guide every people. All of them performed their duties fully. But upon the person of our Prophet he also placed the burden of being a perfect example for all people to follow. He sent him with a Book. But he did not leave us the book he brought and go; he lived it in his life in actual practice, and he also made a perfect and practical exegesis of that book. He was a walking Qur'an, for his character was a concrete manifestation of the Qur'an.

Not only in his interpretation of the Qur'an verse by verse but also in his personal traits, in his conduct toward his friends, his relatives, his enemies, his wives, children, in his etiquette of social conduct, in every matter he is the only person in the world who can be imitated without regret. Everyone certainly has very important figures around them who have entered their lives and influenced them. People they admire in thought, in work, in profession, in conduct. All of them have a place where somehow, somewhere, they burst. There are writers, philosophers, poets, literary figures, artists, scientists, teachers, hodjas; from afar, charismatic, people you think are as assertive and consistent as can be in their writings, their art, their thoughts; you approach them and cannot get past their caprices, their sulks, their complexes, their unresolved traumas and the effects of these upon them.

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) constitutes a complete exception in this respect too. He possesses traits that can be imitated even in the simplest matters and, by this aspect alone, creates a hope that a perfect personality is possible and provides an accessibility. That is why throughout history you see a beauty reflected in those people who have truly been able to imitate him and follow his path. To the extent that his path, behavior, words, personality, style and manner constitute a model, it has been possible for people close to perfection to appear on the stage of history, of course none of them being completely like him, but only to the extent that they approached him.

That congratulating the Prophet's birthday and reviving the Mawlid al-Sharif was not recommended by him himself is, in itself, a practice of his own humility, of the humility he recommended to everyone. So perhaps those who see remembering and marking his birth as a deviation (bid'ah) from his sunnah are not saying something literally wrong, but there is no harm in making today an occasion to stop and reflect upon his blessed personality, sunnah and character; on the contrary, there is boundless benefit.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who was asked for his opinion on this subject in his time, reacted to those who regard celebrating the mawlid as bid'ah by saying "If we celebrate the anniversary of our Prophet's (pbuh) birth in order to remember and remind others of his blessed biography, his magnificent exemplary personality and the immortal message that God conveyed as a mercy to the worlds, what deviation or misguidance can there be in this?!"

In fact, even the Mawlid, which has been practiced as a ceremony throughout history, has had such a minimal function. But these days, for the Mawlid to turn the Prophet's personality into a stronger role model for Muslims, it needs to be revived and marked in a different way. The heartless world needs, more than ever, such a heart sent as a mercy to the worlds. The oppressive world also needs the objection and rebellion that he would raise, and a redistribution that would establish justice, staying within the bounds of justice, without entering the path of vengeance. But above all it needs him to awaken the heedless, whose eyes have been blinded by ideologies and who have become even more attached to their masters because they have been humiliated..