The Anniversary of the Prophet's Birth

Every glorious memory carries within its mantle a special fragrance, holding rapture, admonition, and lessons.

And the heroism embodied in these memories varies in its degrees of greatness and merit, just as it varies in what it carries of the glory of life and loftiness of spirit.

When the heroism of the spirit reaches the summit of its purity, it becomes an effective means for saving humanity and lifting it to the attainment of sacrifice and sublimity, and becomes one of the causes that move the generations along the ascending paths of awakening, evolution, and rising.

But the memories of heroic deeds, for all their splendor together, are but candles of faded rays before the greatest radiance shining from Muhammad ibn Abdallah; they dwindle before what this blessed memory — the memory of the noble Prophet's birth — carries of great ideals that stir in the heart the sense of reverence and exaltation, and draw from the imagination pictures that fill the heart with humility and glorification.

It is a procession of the majesty of pure souls, embodied in heroes who rose above the circumstances of this existence and marched in the train of the Greatest Messenger, who gave them the highest example and guided them to the straight path — the path of those upon whom God has bestowed His favor, so they were not among those who go astray.

In this memory is an example of the greatness of holy struggle: the struggle of a messenger from God, not like the struggle of the ambitious for the monopoly of power, but for the liberation of the spirit, the refinement of character, and the purification of conscience, by way of the call to a true religion that lifts from men's breasts the nightmare of bondage to an all-embracing idolatry — idolatry in worship and idolatry in inclinations — under which the feelings turned to stone and rolled down to the abyss of disbelief in God.

And the worst of the ignorances that have afflicted humanity is the blackness of ignorance of God's supreme will, which points always to the flame of truth that lights up souls and spreads the halo of goodness through existence.

When true faith fills hearts, it aims their bow toward the good, directs their inclinations toward righteousness, and raises their intentions to lofty truths; then veils woven of life's counterfeits fall away from men's insight, that the light of God may settle in the heights of perfection.

The message of the Messenger, God bless him and grant him peace, was a religion; in religion there is faith; from faith a light goes forth; and in that light are clarity, knowledge, and certainty.

In knowledge there is a power that awakens the spirit and bestows life; and in life are sublimity, elevation, and communion with the Supreme Truth. And there, on the lofty horizon, is a spiritual delight before whose glory every worldly possession dwindles.

Muhammad ibn Abdallah came with a heavenly, magnanimous law containing ordinances and constitutions; and in order there is a barrier against evils, a restraint upon passions, a destroyer of aggressions, and a spreader of justice and equality. So he made equal the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, woman and man, in all in which the honorable human being ought to be equal.

He said, peace be upon him: "The most honored of you in the sight of God is the most God-fearing of you." And, "No one's faith is complete until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself." He called out among the people: "God is greatest," and the echoes answered in the depths of hearts, which turned to God, worshipping none but Him. No worship, then, of wealth or rank or luxury, but abstinence from them, a rising above their pleasures, a power to discipline the soul into denying exploiting selfhood and destructive egoism, and a strength to bind oneself with the bond of sincere love and all-embracing brotherhood among the members of all humanity.

And when they offered him wealth, dominion, and rank, that he might renounce his message and worship what his people had worshipped before him, he said: "By God, if they placed the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left, that I should abandon this cause, I would not abandon it until God makes it triumph or I perish for its sake."

By this he awakened an ignorant nation, which carried to the world an Arab civilization that was a radiant link in the chain of the civilizations of the peoples.

Peace, then, upon this holy memory, and God's blessing and peace upon His Messenger.