Well, what it means to Muslims is one of the many ways that we seek out and celebrate of u recognizing and giving thanks for Allah's blessings. It's an obligation to um celebrate the blessings that Allah subhana wa ta'ala has showered upon us. The Quran is full of the ayat of Allah. The ayat which are the colors, our languages, the difference of male and female, the beauties that Allah has created in the natural world. We're not just told about that out of idle curiosity on our part, but because it instills the shook of the gratitude which is the basis for eman and he is sallallahu alaihi wasallam who's the greatest blessing. So if we're not going to give thanks for him and for the time when he came into the world, then the whole principle of shook has been devalued and and misunderstood. So for Muslims, it's it's a fundamental way of expressing our gratitude to Allah subhana wa ta'ala for rescuing us from the mess that humanity regularly gets itself into. What we need is to go back to the the basis and the basis is the fact that the the the the fossil the dividing line between kosfur and iman is the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and but for him and but for the time when he came into the world and but for his s we would all be down the pub or who knows what. So really everything that's that's inshallah good and righteous in our lives is thanks to him and he is thanks to Allah subhana wa ta'ala because he is just abb he's just a slave and he doesn't just say things that he's made up he relays it from from his lord so that's the greatest blessing and the instinct of every believer and really the yard stick of the presence of real faith is the desire to thank Allah subhana wa ta'ala for that great interruption in history when the jahyah came to a close and the light of faith began. If we don't give thanks for that in every possible lawful means then what's the meaning of shukra? Well, the the the purpose of the mid uh cannot be different from the single purpose which underlies every other institution that is accepted by the olyma of Islam which is to turn us away from the self and towards the lord. If something doesn't do that, it's not worth doing and it's not a permissible practice. It may be mubarak at best, but it can't be anything more than that. The malid is required because it is uh a demonstrably effective way of melting hearts of reconnecting people with the s of bringing about uh a genuine sense of connectedness with the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and the and the early generations and reminding us of this great blessing that Allah subhana wa tala has conferred upon humanity and upon this ummah particularly through his ba through his through his sending. So uh that's the purpose. The purpose is the only religious purpose which is take take us away from self and towards Allah subhanana wa ta'ala through remembering the individual who represents that that process more perfectly than any other individual in history. That's what it's for. And so many hearts have been melted uh even in very unexpected quarters from people simply reading the s listening to uh songs and poems of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. Uh the malid exists only for one shar purpose which is to increase people's love for the messenger. That's what it's for. It's not just an opportunity to hang out with friends. It's a very serious business because it is the continuation of the the spirit of prophecy which is taking people out of ignorance into truth. So it's it's a sugared pill but the the pill is the hard one of we have to sort ourselves out and sorting ourselves out is uh the process of stripping away our own patterns of behavior which are based on naps and ego and dark things and conforming ourselves to the highest model which is the model of the the best of humanity which is the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam that of course is difficult following the sunnah conforming is not an easy thing and it's supposed to be an easy thing, but nonetheless, we sugar that pill because humanity, you know, needs the carrot, needs to be drawn in because of what we're like. We're like donkeys that need need luring with something beautiful. And the beauty is authentic because it's based on the shuk and based on the jamal, the beauty of the the chosen one. Well uh apart from all of the timeless benefits that the mama have always uh associated with the mulid there perhaps added reasons proper to our situation where it's an important uh institution for us. Uh one of them I think is that this is an age which is very much interested in even preoccupied with anniversaries. You open your average pocket diary and you see first uh um rocket in space or something launched on this day, you know, 1952, people somehow like to hinge important events on the days when they took place. And so if we uh are taking the principle of dawa seriously and the center of the dawa has to be the message and the center of the message is the messenger himself. uh the best and the easiest and the least uh pmical way of attracting people is to say well this is the day on which the founder of our religion sallallahu alaihi wasallam was born we're going to have a party a celebration would you like to come along and of course people can respond to that because they go to commemorations of every conceivable kind so it's a lot easier it's a lot easier drawing people into the circle of of the dean on the basis of the malid than on the basis of their aid because the aid is something that's rather distinctive and they don't have an immediate equivalent in their own tradition. So it's something strange. They're not immediately attracted to it. And it also has a kind of formal salat dimension that they can't participate in. Whereas the celebration of something like a motive is is is something that they can recognize the significance uh the significance of in their own frame of reference. Of course, it's easy it's easy to explain. If I say to them, well, we have this thing called uh al which is when we end a month of fasting when we don't eat and drink. It seems rather strange and it's hard for them to participate when they haven't been fasting. If I say next week, we've got a celebration of the birthday of the founder of our religion. They can immediately figure that out and they'll come. And this has been proven down the centuries. It's not just a western Muslim experience that one of the principal doors through which people have entered Islam has been through the malid. I mean even if it were something that had never been attempted before. I think it would be an obligation upon us to use it as long as it doesn't violate any established principle in the religion. something that softens people's hearts and gives them an opportunity perhaps the only opportunity they'll ever have to learn about um the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam is something that an opportunity that we really need to to grab with both hands because there's an immense amount of ignorance and the ignorance ultimately is ignorance about theul the basic principles of the religion and there's no better way to explain Islam to them than by taking them in some beautiful melodic way through the basis of the man and the shil and the s of of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. It's it's the the best the most attractive the easiest point of entry to the religion. There are plenty of people uh who may feel alienated by the rather stern culture that many of our mosques have adopted. Um but who may feel more at ease with something that's there's a meal involved and a celebration and there's flags and children are eating sweets and so forth and it's something that doesn't stress them out and alienate them. And it may well be uh the point through which they come back to the practice of the religion through this institution of the mallet. And again, we've seen that many times. Oh, gratitude is the basis of it. Sabar and shuk are the basis of faith. They're the same thing. If you have shuk to Allah and in the face of misfortunes, that is iman. Eman has no other definition. So if you're going to walk around frowning, scowlling, upset with the way the world is uh really cross all the time as a lot of Muslims seem to be nowadays rather than giving thanks for the many blessings that Allah continues to pour out on us, something wrong with your eman. This is the crisis of the Muslims today basically that we're terrified by the asbab and the fact that everybody's out to get us and things are really going wrong rather than as the traditional mmin said Allah is enough for us and a good protector so that even in the moments of real trial and tribulation he was always smiling and relaxed because he knew that Allah was still in control and the greatest sign of that tawacul is to know that for as long as the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam is a real presence amongst us then things can't be far astray. They really can't. Allah will not punish them for as long as you're amongst them. He doesn't cease to be amongst us whether that be in Medina or in the hearts of in an unimaginable variety of ways. Of course, he's amongst us because the the the phenomenon, the created phenomenon that is chosen amongst all of the almost indefinite variety of created phenomena to be the one that brings about the taking out of humanity from the zulat to the nor from the shadows to the night to the light is uh unique. human created abed but nonetheless of the best of everything because Allah subhana wa ta'ala looking out upon the multiplicity of his great creation of course chooses the best receptacle for the the great process of bringing people out of the the shadows into the light. the the the demonstration the unarguable demonstration that we can reclaim the Adamic perfection which we once lost that we can be true representatives of the the the qualities uh that are ultimately heavenly qualities on earth. That's why he's good news because he shows we can become better than what we ordinarily are even in the midst of vahilia and darkness and ignorance. And the thanksgiving gratitude is in its nature um not a kind of cringing survile thing but something joyful. It's something that because it's celebrating a blessing that has made us happy. Gratitude is necessarily a happy state of bust and overflowing and and goodwill and coming together and that's the spirit of the mlid and that's why the Muslims everywhere in the world get together and celebrate and that's the distinction between the individual for whom Islam is a kind of cold program and the Muslim for whom Islam is a living reality where the spontaneity of faith has due expression. So you can say this is a kind of litmus test for the for the profoundity of somebody's faith. If they're going to celebrate the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, then we can say that they have the a real understanding of faith. If they're going to say, well, it's a blessing and so forth, but we're not going to do anything about it. Um, then there's there's something wrong. There's a Nox. There's a there's a deformity. And you can see that in the kind of people who celebrate it and the kind of people who don't. uh the British Muslim community, the sort of indigenous Muslims here have celebrated the the molid for really well over a hundred years. We don't know exactly when the mallet was first celebrated in England, but the likelihood is that it was in the 1890s, probably in the Liverpool mosque, but of course, it's possible to speculate about people celebrating the the mid in the years before the act of toleration was passed and during the years of the Lordian persecution in the 17th century when it was a capital offense to declare oneself a Muslim in this country. So we can speculate people at the time of the English civil war getting together celebrating their faith as Muslims and and and commemorating the mid in some form and we know that that was a period when there was a lot of writing in this country about the Sierra um Henry Stub for instance who may or may not have been some kind of closet Muslim wrote this amazing biography of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam at the time of the civil war. uh he was on the royalist side uh in which he points out that the way in which the English can take themselves out of this state of warfare and interacing strife and sectarian competition over which religious vision controls the state by looking at the Muslim model and particularly by focusing on on the s of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. So who knows only Allah subhanana wa ta'ala knows when the maled was first celebrated amongst British Muslims but it's been a very firm practice ever since and uh one of the things that most successfully cemented my faith as a new Muslim quarter of a century ago was the the very widespread practice of the malid amongst uh both indigenous and migrant Muslims in in this country. It's a hugely important part of the scaffolding of eman in this country and always has been. One of the things that the British Muslim community has always been very keen on is uh picking up the Muslim tradition of expressing the beauties of the faith and particularly things about the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam in the various languages of the Muslim world. So Turkish literature, Farcy literature, Albec literature, Malay literature have always been enriched by this sort of poetry and taking that into the new soil of the English language. And for at least 100 years, British Muslims have got together and they've sung songs according to traditional English melo melodies in English uh about the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, about the Quran, about um all of the basic things that Muslims like to celebrate. So the group that we have at Cambridge University is a group of young u Muslim undergraduates of a variety of of backgrounds who like to get together and uh revive this tradition of singing uh sometimes Victorian melodies sometimes even Elizabethan melodies catches glee rounds part songs uh in order to maintain this this beautiful Islamic tradition. It's a very effective way of getting the message across in a um non-confrontational way to ears that otherwise would not listen to us at all.