THE hundreds of thousands of hadith and sunnah (purported sayings and deeds of the Prophet) are like stars in the heavenly sky.

The ancient Mayans saw patterns in the night sky that changed with the seasons. With that, they created their calendar to guide them as to when to plant and to celebrate. To the Polynesians, ancient and modern, those stars are their compasses as they sail the vast Pacific. Unlike modern GPS, those stars never run out of batteries!

During Mawlid Nabi (observance of the Prophet’s birth), Muslims reflect on the wisdom of his words and recall his many exemplary deeds. Hadith and sunnah, like the heavenly stars, guide us. However, merely reciting them without the associated reflections and actions achieves little.

That would be akin to primitive tribes who struck gongs, fired cannons and sacrificed virgins to frighten or appease the giant dragon from devouring their moon. When the eclipse was over, they congratulated themselves for having saved the universe.

Saudi writer Adil Salahi said it best in the epigraph of his biography of the Prophet, Muhammad: Man And Prophet. Muslims would best demonstrate their love for the Prophet by following his teachings, not by singing his praises.

Yet, the sine qua non of Mawlid Nabi, in Malaysia and elsewhere, is the endless singing of praises for the man. Malaysia goes further, with colourful parades, grand festivals and glittering award ceremonies thrown in.

As for emulating the Prophet’s many sterling attributes, many are content with aping the man’s superficiality – sporting unshaven faces and donning overflowing robes. Others resort to acquiring child brides and/or multiple wives. We imitate the Prophet in the most able way that we can, would be their lame, pathetic excuse. They do not even bother to hide their carnal urges.

Those Muslims forget or never learnt that the Prophet’s actions and motivations were expressions of his charity. The four-wife limit was to tame the then unlimited number, as with today’s obsession with trophy cars, prized mares and pedigree bitches. It was also to redress the social problems of the many widowed due to wars. As for child brides, at the time, they were the tried-and-true instruments for cementing inter-tribal bonds. Those noble sentiments are the very opposite of the priapic propensities of current corpulent Muslims.

Then, consider the hadith where the Prophet predicted that his ummah (followers) would be divided into 73 sects, and all but one would be misled and hell-bound. This one hadith, more than any other, is instrumental to the ongoing schisms in Islam, what with every Muslim believing that his sect is the only true one, the rest misguided.

The irony that this hadith is the most frequently expounded upon escapes me. I would have expected it to be buried deep in the archives, retrievable only by obsessive scholars. Far from enlightening the ummah, the glut of commentaries only adds to the confusion.

The clarity and centrality of this hadith escape these erudite scholars. If your sect has only a one-in-73 chance of being correct, that means you have a corresponding 72-in-73 (98.6%) chance of being misled! That is a certainty in statistics. A humbling thought!

Perversely, most Muslims conclude otherwise. They believe they are among the super-select rightly guided!

A destructive corollary to that hubris is the messianic zeal to “correct” the “misled”, to the point of intolerance of those who do not share your interpretations. You become exclusive, insular, and most dangerous of all, closed to new or different ideas. Such arrogance and certitudes are the very antithesis of the qualities demonstrated by the Prophet.

If you read the probabilities right, or are humble enough, and assume that you are among the misguided 72, that motivates you to learn from the others, believing that one of them would be right. You become inclusive, tolerant of others, and open to new ideas in the process.

With the religious freedom afforded to me in America, I have benefited much from the teachings of the Wahhabis, Ismailis, Ahmaddiyahs and others. From the Wahhabis, I appreciate the crucial role of rites and rituals in anchoring social and family stability; from the Ismailis, communal goals and efforts; and the Ahmaddiyahs, the importance of learning and social welfare. All those sects, and others, have enhanced my understanding of this great faith.

It is not a surprise that American Muslims are becoming more ecumenical, no longer identifying with any particular sect. With my mosque in California, we have been privileged to host visiting imam and ulama of various theological persuasions, to the benefit of our congregation.

By contrast, in Malaysia, if I were caught reading Shia literature, I could be jailed under the Internal Security Act, the same draconian penalty imposed on communists!

Back to that hadith, when asked as to which sect was the rightly guided one, the Prophet responded: “Ahl as Sunnah wa’l Jama’ah” (Those of the tradition and congregation).

Scholars and ulama have long been engaged in endless puerile debates to identify this chosen, privileged group referred to by the Prophet, and the accompanying quest for Muslim unity. The crusade for the return of the caliphate is a variant of this sentiment. We ignore that of the first four “rightly guided” caliphs, three were assassinated – hardly the reflection of a united ummah even then.

“Just follow the Quran and sunnah” is another simplistic mantra endlessly and meaninglessly pursued. If only we were to do that, then Muslim unity would be assured. Again, here we forget or ignore that even when the Prophet was alive, there were already vigorous debates on the very nature of the Quran as well as the Prophet’s utterances. Imagine more than 1400 years later!

We are more likely to achieve unity, or at least peace, not through coerced unanimity, but through greater understanding and better appreciation of the differences that necessarily exist among the ummah. Be inclusive. Accept and tolerate the differences among us. Better yet, embrace and celebrate our diversity.

That is the essence of the Prophet’s rightly guided “Ahl as-Sunnah wa’l Jama’ah”. That should be our northern star. – December 24, 2018.

* M. Bakri Musa reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.