What does it mean to follow the Sunnah of the Prophet?

In this eloquent article, the author tells us what it means to follow the Sunnah of the Prophet, peace be upon him, which is not a mechanical imitation, but to wonder what he would have done in each situation.

Can we find the steps of the beloved when the beloved is gone? Can we find the scent, the fragrance, the redolence of his trail? Can we look for the fragments of memory, the smiles, the laughter and the kind gestures? Can we locate beauty more than fourteen hundred years later? I agonize over these questions, struggle with promises, and refuse despair.

I agonize over the questions, and then I run to the Conference, I run to the books. I run to the papers and ink. I run to the transmissions and reports, to such and such a report of such and such. I look for evidence in books, in testimonies and quotes, and in layers of words. I pursue it with the taste of reverence, with the fervor of zeal and the ecstasy of love. What I want is not to find him, because the Prophet is dead, but to find the perfume of his soul, the radiance of his beautiful face, and the magnanimous happiness of his hands. Yes, I look in hadith, sunan and masanid, I even look in imagination and dreams. Those who love him will understand, and others will only be interested in the archaeology of his footprints in the sand. But the perfume of the beloved travels in the soul, not in the heavy winds or the antiquities of the earth.

I search, and what I find are sightings and descriptions of time and place: the reports that tell what the beloved said or did, the beloved once occupied this certain space. But I don’t want to watch the scattering of the remains, or just retrace their steps, or pick up the relics along the way. What I want is to inhale the perfume, spray it on my soul, wash my heart, and reshape every cell in my brain. You see, I don’t want to memorialize or make a memorial, and I don’t want to remember or build a shrine. I’m not looking for charts or illustrations, I’m not looking for blueprints or outlines. The Sunnah of the beloved, my friends, is not a map; it lives in our soul, not in our hand.

I don’t want to retrace his steps and then walk in his footsteps. I want to walk my own path and route, because in life, no two paths are exactly alike. But I want to walk the path of life with his heart, not mine.

Imitating the Prophet is nothing but impersonation, since his sublimity cannot be simulated. The instant his majesty is rebuilt, it is reduced and degraded. To automatically replicate their Sunnah becomes a grotesque parody of sights and sounds, a degrading forgery, and an insolent forgery. The authenticity of the Prophet does not mean imitation, but personification.

Beauty is not falsifying what cannot be copied, but beauty is giving life to the truth of the Prophet. And, truth cannot be placed within the idiosyncrasy of limits. We cannot follow the Sunnah Prophet, of the beloved, we must live it, as if we inhaled the fragrance only to emit it.

So, I am on the path of my life confronting my own destiny, but I face it with its fragrance, its truth and its beauty. I stand with dignity, firm, somber and serious, because I sit down to judge myself before God seals my case. When I am presented with a problem or an argument, I exercise diligent restraint. Because I ask myself the fundamental question that transcends time, place, or any limitation: “What would the Prophet have done in this situation?”

In whatever life gives or takes, in rewards or risks, in pains or discomforts, in pleasures or gratifications, I inhale the fragrance of the Prophet and ask, “What would the Prophet have done in this situation?”

Whom would the Prophet have married? How would the Prophet have made love or acted towards his neighbors? How would the Prophet have acted in his home, shared happiness, or reacted to any consternation? How would the Prophet have dealt with an outstretched hand or acted toward this poverty or deprivation? How would the Prophet have driven a car, gotten a job, or even responded to some small sensation?

The answer to the question is mine and yours, not the Prophet’s, for the truth is that the Prophet is not susceptible to relative individualization. But asking the question will open the heart to the beautiful authenticity of the Prophet and to the moral self-realization of the heart.

“What would the Prophet have done in this situation?” A society built upon this solemn research is a society imbued with its blessed fragrance, and its miraculous beauty becomes its salvation. His Sunnah would not be pursued in malformed and twisted imitations, but in a fundamental state of transformation.

Written by Khaled Abou El Fadl on https://es.newmuslim.net/