Maulud: A New Celebration! -By Ayubei Majidadi

The Imam stands on the wooden podium with a microphone in his hand. His listeners, the young and the old, are sitted round the podium to have a clear view of him. The children are arranged on a mat spread in front of the adults , who sit on plastic chairs or lengthy wooden benches. Before the Imam mounts the podium, the Quran would be recited several times , and singers of the praise of the prophet—peace be upon him, Qasidah, would come one by one to present their rhymes.While the Tijjaniya Tariqa followers, founded by Sheikh Ahmad Tijjani of Morocco, do not subscribe to drums beating or the use of instrumentals in singing—this was a long time ago—the Qadiriyas , another sect that claims it origin from Sheikh Abdulqadir Jailani, consent to the use of tambourine alone. The loudspeakers are fixed on a tall tree or the electric poles nearby so that the voice of the preacher, the reciters or the singers could travel far.

When the revered Imam comes on stage, he recounts the biography of the prophet–peace be upon him. His exhortation will bordered on the love of the prophet, his family and his companions. At the end he will urge the faithfuls in present to constantly recite the Quran. This is the kind of maulud celebration I knew when I was young, twenty years ago.

Last week some Muslims celebrated the birth of the prophet—peace be upon him. For the non-Muslim reader not all Muslims agreed on the celebration of the prophet’s birth. My home town was filled with indiscriminate sound of musical instruments and a loud pandemonium. It looks like a sallah day when I went out to see what was happening, unless for the heavy musicals that saturated the air. Many of our Muslim faithfuls put on their fineries to observe the occasion. Heavy beatings of musical instruments ripple through the air from every angle of the town. Big speakers were mounted on the back of pick-up trucks and a large population of people, mostly youth and minors , were trailing the truck behind, in a straight line, dancing to the music the Dj was playing to them. The music was a usual Qasidah—a eulogy for the prophet.

A contentious idea, the celebration was innovated after the death of the prophet. Had his guided successors practiced it in their time, the idea wouldn’t have had controversies surrounding it. As it is the nature of Islam, permissibility to innovate is totally unacceptable unless if the idea is cultural or traditional, not related to the ritual of worship. Since anything related to worship requires the consent of Shaari, the Quran or the hadith.

Creativity and innovation are very important. Great feats are achieved by them, and the world has benefited more by them than any other faculty of human thinking. In the ancient world we didn’t have tools or equipment to build skyscrapers, a kilometers-long-bridge on water or electronic devices capable of connecting millions of people. Through innovation and creativity humans are now able to reach Mars—an outer space—and are preparing to inhabit it. But in Islam, a religion of which domain is spiritual not temporal, it’s categorically impermissible to innovate in the spiritual domain.

For example, in the time of the prophet there’s no aeroplane to travel to Saudi Arabia for hajj. But is taking a flight to perform Hajj an innovation that relates to the spiritual domain? Aeroplane is a temporal or material aspect of the world that aids the pilgrims to reach Saudi Arabia. Traveling in it to observe the hajj is not sufficient to categorise it as a justification for innovation in Islam, because it does not touch the spiritual domain.

The stark contrast between the nature of the old ways of observing the Maulud celebration and the new ones, with their profuse use of heavy instrumentals and the admixture of the sexes, requires a deep pondering. The Maulud celebration characterised by the recitation of the Quran, the story of the prophet’s escapades, and exhortations, received a serious critique on the basis that the prophet—peace be upon him—and his guided successors—May Allah be pleased with them—didn’t observe it, how would it be like, the ugliness of the act in the eyes of its detractors, when many things, such as the dancing and twerking, are added to the basics which defied Islamic conventions? For instance, unnecessary interaction between the opposite sexes is prohibited in Islam, unless if they are related by blood and refrain from a display of sexual entreaties. Behind the pick-up trucks, I mentioned earlier which carry the sound-set, were a group of girls and boys of different ages dancing and shaking their bodies as if they were in a night club. Almost impossible to find, the justification for this act should have come from the Quran or the Sunnah.

When such behaviors become the way to celebrate the prophet’s birth, the borders set by Islam against trespassing on its injunctions are useless. It follows that everyone can readjust the jurisprudence of Islam as they wish and nothing is wrong with it. Since Islam has its way of doing things, it’s good that its followers restrict themselves on what’s required from them by Islamic jurisprudence. To delve into something without a clear definition in Islam and attribute it to Islamic conventions is a form of restating the standards the pioneers of the religion set for us. This requires not only a logical justification, but a point of reference in the annals of Islamic history that explicitly depicts the reason for such convention.