Reflections on Mawlid

يا نبي سلام عليك، يا رسول سلام عليك، ياحبيب سلام عليك، يا رسول الله! صلوات الله عليك.

O Prophet peace be upon you, O Messenger peace be upon you, O 

Beloved peace be upon you, O Messenger of Allah! Prayers of God be upon you

Every time I sit with the Sufis, I experience a haal (state) in which for a split moment, it feels as though I am spiritually exposed to what it means to hold a true, intense love of Allah and His Messenger. I am explicitly referring to THE Sufis who are scholars and masters of multiple sciences; not the commoners. Today is the Mawlid of the Prophet Muhammad Salla Allahu Alayhi wa Sallam. Since I have exams coming up, unfortunately I do not have time to attend a gathering of Dhikr, Seerah, and Selawat but I hope to do attend these gatherings soon in this realm and the celestial realm with the Prophet. Even though I really dislike being in school with young, ignorant adolescents thinking of themselves the entire time, as do all adolescents at some point in their life, I can feel sense of baraka somewhere, so I am guessing there are other people rejoicing his birth in this school by heart as well. Having this feeling made me really really happy and has uplifted my mood a lot.

Photo Credit: Mustafa Davis

O Messenger of God, may endless peace and divine blessings be upon you. Your call to God still is heard with our ears and hearts, it is with our minds that we maturely accept. Your tears that fell to the ground are cushioned by the earths dirt. Your remembrance of God still flows with the winds. Your footsteps echo the grounds of Hejaz that you walked on. Your footsteps met with those of your forefathers in Jerusalem. The echos of your footsteps are the melody of the earth. The cries of your companions at your passing are translated into innocent desires.

I wish I can claim to love Allah and His Prophet, but through my actions, it evidently does not prove it. But I do make Du'a that Allah instills in my heart genuine love for Him and His Messenger.

"Ayā rākiban nahwal madīnati qāsidān,
Fa balligh salāmi lil Habībi Muhammadin."

Today is the Mawlid of the Beloved Messenger of Allah. We rejoice his birth. We remember his life. We contemplate the blessing he was to us. We reflect on our current states. We listen and read Qur'an and poetry. We spend time sending prayers of peace and blessings upon his soul so we can gain proximity to Allah, the Prophet, and our goals for the hereafter. We set goals. We read his seerah. We spend time in meditation. We do Dhikr. We thank our Lord that He has blessed us to be from the Ummah of the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه و سلم, the best of all nations. We thank Allah Almighty, Majestic is He, that He made us from the people who, on the Day of Judgment, will be under the Muhammadan Banner.

The love of the Prophet is heavily emphasized in our time because we cannot understand how to love a man that we never met before that loved us, prayed for us, and cared for us more than our own parents and teachers. Materialism has won many of our hearts over Allah and the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه و سلم. Blessed are those who overcome these materialistic innovations that pierce into their lives, influenced by the immodest secular modern ideas proposed on a platter of poisoned sweets. The Saints that carry blameless love for Allah in their hearts were like the common students of the past. In our time, even the love of Allah is lost and not within our hearts. Our celebrities seem to be more beloved to us than the Sahaba and the Prophet Muhammad  صلى الله عليه و سلم. This is the struggle of living in the West; to overcome these materialistic innovations and connect with the Divine and the Chosen One.

We ask Allah to rid them from our hearts and replace them with love for Allah, the Prophet Muhammad  صلى الله عليه و سلم, the Qur'an and Sunnah, the Sahaba, the Ahl al Bayt, the Saalihin, the Awliya and our beloved parents.

My thoughts come from a book by Mawlana Zulfiqar Ahmed, the Hanafi Jurist and Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi, "Love for Allah."

Listen to this talk by Shaykh Husain Abdul Sattar as he finishes the Shama'il of Imam at-Tirmidhi on the Chapter of the Death of the Messenger of Allah, endless divine peace and blessing be upon his soul. It is something we should reflect on often.

I pray that whoever listens to this or has/had the intention of listening to this with the desire to be closer to Allah and His Prophet have their prayers accepted and unite with the Prophet in the Gardens with your beloved ones, his beloved ones, and the beloved ones of Allah and bypass all punishment and they increase in good.

I ask everybody make Du'a for me that Allah saves me from the Fire.

Listen to this soothing recitation of the Qasida Burda of Imam Al Busairi ash-Shadhili by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf and the Moroccan Munshidin.