The Response to Those Who Said It Is Permissible to Celebrate the Mawlid

Question:
You said, Your Eminence, in your talk that celebrating the birth of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is a bid'ah (religious innovation). So what do you say about the evidence cited by those who hold mawlid celebrations from the Book, the Sunnah, the athar (reports from the Companions or successors), and rational inferences?

Answer:
Everything he mentioned has no limit in it. Rather, it is an argument against him. Muhammad 'Alawi al-Maliki, the well-known scholar, mentioned a book on this. It is a small book in which he collected more than twenty [narrations], claiming they are attributed to him, but they all indicate the opposite of what he said.
They are all deception and a failure to clarify the truth, but desire blinds and deafens. So they are an argument against him. According to the logic of his evidence, any gathering that involves prohibiting the Prophet or the Prophets would be permissible. So, according to his listing of his evidence, if all days and nights were made festivals for the Prophets and for Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), and their births were honored and mentioned in them, that would be a remembrance of them, an exaltation of them, and a prayer upon them. This would mean that all days and nights are festivals. This is all batil (invalid), and there is no proof in it, neither in its beginning nor in its end. All the books he mentioned are an argument against him. Those who responded to him have clarified that and explained the invalidity of what he said. We ask Allah to guide him, for he has been confused, and it has dried up for people like him. We ask Allah to bestow guidance upon them and to return them to the right path. If this were better than what came before us, the best of circumstances (may Allah be pleased with them) would have preceded us to it. That is, we would be more knowledgeable than Abu Bakr, 'Umar, 'Uthman, and 'Ali, and we would be more knowledgeable than the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and we would be guided to something better than what they were guided to. That would mean their time was deprived of this good, and we were guided to it. This is impossible. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said that a group will remain in the place of truth, supported. They were upon the truth in the first, second, and third centuries. They were upon the truth without harm, and they did not have a mawlid. So they were deprived of this good and this virtue, and it was obtained by those after them who were more ignorant and had less virtue than them. And take what the former, the predecessors, and the righteous were deprived of, and the later ones gained it. Or the former were ignorant of it, and the later ones became worthy of it. This is also impossible. So whoever claims that the later ones reached what the former ones did not has held a clear delusion. Yes.