MILAD: Prophet Muhammad’s birth celebrations

Dr. Mike Ghouse   January 3, 2017   Comments Off on MILAD: Prophet Muhammad’s birth celebrations

MILAD: Prophet Muhammad’s birth celebrations

The Center for Pluralism invites you to an intra-faith and interfaith Milad (variations: Moulood, Mawlid, Mavlid) event to celebrate the peace work of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and his contribution to build cohesive societies.

Prophet Muhammad’s birthday fell on December 11, 2016, but traditionally it is celebrated year round – the idea is to highlight his peace work.  God called him a mercy to mankind and his mission was teaching a sense of equality of humans, humility that builds bridges, liberation of women, slavery and caring for neighbors, and among other things creating just societies.

Event Details

Purposeful Event

This is a purposeful event with three clear goals; to share Prophet’s peace building work, to focus on how we can adopt his teachings to benefit the society at large, and to bring Muslims of different denominations along with members of family of many faiths together for the common purpose of celebrating Prophet Muhammad’s work on his birthday.

The event is divided into two sessions.

The first segment is singing the Naats (Naats also known as Nasheeds are devotional songs in praise of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Men and women will sing in the groups. Muslims of different denominations including Sunni, Shia, Ahmadi, Bohra, Ismaili, Sufi, WD Muhammad others will share a Naat in different languages.  We are also asking members of other faiths such as Hindus, Jains and Christians to join in the singing.

The second segment is assigned to our poets, who have composed their own poetry for the occasion to reflect on Prophet’s work and how we can make that meaningful in our day to day life, emphasis is how it works today.  Our Jewish, Christian, Atheist, Pagan and other friends have an option to express their thoughts about the relevance of Prophet’s teaching in creating harmony and cohesion.

Throughout the program, we will be highlighting the inclusive teachings of Prophet’s wisdom.  The values embedded in the Madinah constitution will be shared, where the prophet signed a declaration with Jews, Christians, Pagans and others. Each member of community was guaranteed the freedom to practice his or her faith freely. We need to rebuild those attitudes, and it starts with each one of us.

Furthermore, in his last sermon, the Prophet declared that all men are created equal, and respecting each human is the right thing to do. Like the people of all faiths, Muslims constantly refresh the inclusive teachings of the prophet.

This program was organized twice before. A few pictures are here:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeghouse/albums/72157641382648224/Show

Festivals of the world

“Festivals of the World” is about birth celebrations Jesus, Krishna, Muhammad, Guru Nanak, Bahaullah, Buddha and others. It started out as an educational series in 1993. When we live in the same communities as neighbors, we might as well learn about each other. The best way to build cohesive societies is for its members is to participate in festivities as well as commemorations of each other, or at least understand each other’s’ joys and sorrows. You can plug in the name of any religious festival next to Mike Ghouse on Google Search and you’ll find information about it.

Festival of Faiths was born out of a necessity. The apprehension that we see in each American about the other is not healthy for America’s harmony, peace and prosperity. As Americans, we are determined to go past the doom and gloom, and celebrate America.  Here is an article about it –

Want to learn about the Prophet?

Our interfaith friends who are not familiar with “Muhammad, the peace maker” and want to share a few words about the things they like about the prophet, here are a few videos to catch up with.

Articles: