Mawlid-al Nabi—Prophet Muhammad’s Birthday (PBUH)
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful
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When I was in Egypt in 1988, candied animals, usually camels, were distributed to the children—colored ones in Upper Egypt and white ones in Lower Egypt—a s a way of celebrating Mawlid-al Nabi, the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam.
This year, Mawlid-al-Nabi falls on February 4, 2012. Sunni Muslims and some Shiite Muslims celebrate Mawlid-al-Nabi on the twelfth of Rabi-al-Awwal which is the third month of the Islamic calendar. Most Shiite Muslims, however, observe it on the seventeenth of the month to coincide with the birth date of their sixth Imam, Ja’fa al-Sadiq.