The truest love of the Prophet (ﷺ) is in obedience to his command, following of his Sunnah, and abstention from inventing in the religion what he did not legislate. He (ﷺ) lived among his Companions for twenty-three years and never once observed his birthday, nor did Abu Bakr, ''Umar, ''Uthman, or ''Ali, nor any of the four Imams of fiqh — and they were the most loving of him from this Ummah. So either we say (ma''adh Allah) that they were ignorant of a good which we have discovered, or that they knew but withheld it from the Ummah, or — what is the truth — that this practice has no basis in the religion. The Prophet (ﷺ) was sent in time of jahiliyyah where the Christians had taken the birthday of ''Isa as a feast (Christmas), and the Sharī''ah was sent to differentiate the believers from them, not to imitate them: "Whoever imitates a people is one of them." (Abu Dawud 4031, sahih). Loving the Prophet (ﷺ) is in following him every day — not in one annual feast borrowed in form from the religions of others.