Celebrating Muhammad’s birthday was core to Spanish crypto-Muslim identity

Evidence

One thing is clear from this literature: the devotion accorded to Muhammad, the celebration of the feast of his birthday (mawlid /mawlud) was a well-established feature of popular Islam in Spain. In much earlier times and elsewhere in the Islamic world, the marking of the day by special ceremonies may have met resistance from those who regarded it as an undesirable innovation, but clearly Spain’s crypto-Muslims saw such practices as an integral part of their religion, something to be preserved under conditions of adversity along with other more central doctrinal features. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 704

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general theme of minority religious groups preserving festival traditions under persecution as identity markers.