Last year we had a discussion on Halloween in Pakistan and this year we’ll try to see the issues faced by the Pakistani community when they try to celebrate or try to shy away from Halloween while living abroad.
It has been boiling inside of me since that fateful day when I went to a mosque for an Iftari last Ramzan. I have a very good friend who is a part of the management at one of mosques and he invited me to come to the mosque for an iftari and a dars (sermon) by the resident maulvi. Coincidentally, I had to pass a few of his earlier invitations because of one commitment or another, so I decided to go this time. I sent him a confirmation email a day before that I will be there. However, I asked him that will he exclude me from Daira-e-Islam (circle of Islam) if I did not listen to Mullah and leave before he speaks. My friend, as expected from a gentleman that he is, sent me an email indicating his agreement with a smiley at the end.
Just to give you a little background. I am not an atheist. I consider myself a proud Muslim. I have indeed gone through my phases of atheism, agnosticism and all kinds of confusions when it comes to religion but I am thankful to God that I have evolved as a believer. When I look back, I realize that I never had any issues with Islam but I have always had issues with Muslims. To this day, I hate to see Islam used and abused by none other than the followers of this great religion.
Anyway, when I arrived at the mosque for the Iftari, my friend introduced me to the Maulvi. He seemed like a decent educated chap. After my meeting with him, my friend asked me again, if I wanted to stay for the sermon. It was hard to say no at that point. The sermon started off well and then at one point the maulvi revealed to the crowd in a very dramatic tone, that if all of the people in the mosque knew that their house was on fire. There was a silence in the room. The maulvi took another dramatic turn and said “ your house is on fire”! There was a murmur in the crowd. The maulvi repeated this statement three or four times and then asked the people, “do you want to know why?”. Some of the front row enthusiasts replied in a yes and the maulvi unfolded the mystery. The point was that our houses were on fire was because we live next to the biggest Satan, the United States. Damn! I mumbled under my breath.
I hate this meaningless US bashing. I am no fan of Mr. Bush and in fact I have several issues with the US policies. I think most of the times they are manipulative and sometimes just plain stupid. Having said that, I want to emphasize on the fact that I have no hard feelings against the American people. As a Pakistani Muslim, I believe we have a political conflict with the Unites States government and it does not translate into a war between Americans against the Muslims. The American people are simple and ignorant people like us. The difference is that they have been trapped inside a bubble. They have no idea about the outside world. All there is to them is the US and all they know about the outside world is via a biased media. It is not their fault that they are not aware of the reality of the Middle Eastern conflict. If you live with these people, you discover that hey are friendly, family oriented people with their own value system. Not every one is having sex with everyone else. Jerry Springer is not depicting the real American culture. Like us, these people too work hard to provide for their families and are not striving or conniving to destroy Islam or Muslims. It’s a political conflict , let’s keep it a political conflict!
The next trigger for this article was an email in one of the mail lists that I subscribe to titled “Surviving Halloween”. The title pretty much describes the essence of the e-mail. Here is a quote from the e-mail.
“How can we worship only Allah, the Creator, if we participate in activities that are based in pagan rituals, divination, and the spirit world? May Allah protect us from such misguidance”.
This email also had several quotations from Quran and forbade muslims to become a part of the pagan ritualistic tradition of Halloween like
“So many people participate in these celebrations without even understanding the history and the pagan connections, just because their friends are doing it, their parents did it (”it’s a tradition!”), and because “it’s fun!” Allah described such people in the Qur’an: “When it is said unto them, ‘Come to what Allah has revealed, come to the Messenger,’ they say, ‘Enough for us are the ways we found our fathers following.’ What! Even though their fathers were void of knowledge and guidance?” (Qur’an > 5:104)
I am not a religious scholar and so the first question I raise is what is the context of this quotation from Quran? Is it not that Arabs had traditions of burying daughters, worshipping idols, etc or it can be applied to children dressing up in cartoon characters and going to every home in the neighborhood to collect candy?
The second question I would raise is what does Quran say about people who use religion and quotations from Quran to serve their personal hidden agendas and what does it say about the people who in their sheer ignorance propagate these views by forwarding such emails. This emotional, exploitive rhetoric is shaping up the views and opinions of our new generation.
The third question is that being a Pakistani Muslim living in North America, if our children go “trick or treating” are they really defying the principles of Islam? I may not have an answer to the first two questions but I do believe that I know the answer to third question. I do believe that Islam is about sharing joy and love. As some one on the same mail list pointed out that we should be celebrating to the extent that we understand that it is sharing in other peoples ‘happiness and festivals’. However, at the same time we should be explicitly clear in our understanding (and our communication to kids) that this is not part of our religion. There should not be any harm as long as this understanding is clear. The gentleman also pointed out a risk that with the passage of time, this understanding or differentiation may not remain clear, and these festivals may be considered a part of Islam. I agree and with my decision to live in the “West”, I took the responsibility to provide and maintain that line of demarcation bteween our’s and their’s culture and religion.
I agree that Halloween may have roots in pagan rituals but why do we care? Can’t we look at the bigger picture? Do you know where suit and tie comes from that you wear to work everyday? Tie symbolizes a cross. It is a very Christian thing but wearing a suit and tie does not make me Christian because that is not the ‘Neeyat’ (intention). Even your namaz (prayer) is not complete unless you make a ‘Neeyat’. Do you know where Mehndi (before your wedding) comes from you? Who cares? We adapted Hindu culture because we lived with them from hundreds of years. We didn’t adapt worshipping their gods but things that don’t hurt our basic religious principle are fine. Spreading joy and laughter is not unislamic!!! We live in multicultural society. Why can’t we be a part of other people’s festivities and share happiness? I loved it when my white, Canadian friends come to my house on Eid for Sheer Qurma. Why can’t we stop bashing everything American (even though Halloween is not originally American)? Why can’t we spread some joy and love in the world? Why do we have to highlight the differences and spread hatred? Why can’t the world be just one big happy place?
I watched the Halloween episode of the show “little mosque on the prairie”, and I loved the idea. a Halloween with a cultural twist? Can’t we have our children dressed up like chotay nawab with the kurta, pajama and topi? Can’t we have the bulbul and Jugnoo from Iqbal’s nazm Hamdardee. Can’t we have the Khattak dancer and girl from Thar costumes? If someone comes and tell me this is un-Islamic, the I only thing I can tell them is …Hip Hip Hurrah for Halal-oween!!!
Photo Credits: First photo is taken by the author himself. Other photos for this article have been taken from flickr.com
About the Author: Muslim Rizvi is working as a Solutions Manager for an IT service company. He is based just outside of Toronto, Canada . Muslim is a writer, a poet, a painter, a playwright, an actor and a director and has been associated with theatre for over a decade. These days however, he is playing the role of a full time father and in his own words: “the artist in me died when a father in me was born”.
I’m beginning to miss the old Pakistaniat. :\
It is true that our Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) was never declared intolerant and backward , infact the exact opposite. He was pragmatic and his vision was enlightening and perhaps too liberal for the meccans to digest at that point in time.
If he were to see the muslims of today, he would obviously be hurt. This evolution of the muslim ummah from the prophets time to the present lathi charging, suicide bombing, intolerant, un educated, illiterate and militant muslim was not his vision and neither was it his dream.
What and who has given you the right to think of your religion and your God being better than mine,, what makes you a better muslim than me ?
Did you not know that VANITY is abhored by Allah and yet you wallow in vanity and wear it as a mantle .
Adonis says:
“For those Einsteins who found out that hajj is a pagan ritual, Viqar Minai has very eloquently cleared the issue. But maybe it would help them if they could spare some time reading about origins of hajj from different sources instead of getting their”knowledge” only from Pat Robertson’s sermons.”
Obviously, your sarcasm is directed at me. Your anger and assumption are misplaced. I have rather based my contention on Karen Armstrong’s book, “Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths” and F.E. Peters’ work on Mecca and Medina. I will be happy to read if you have any other neutral source to recommend.
It is quite enlightening to see the comments here. I am a non Muslim and it appears to me that the belief of many Muslims here is so fragile that any deviation from the sacred entails slipping from the religion.
Just have a think - KSA and indeed almost all Muslim countries expect that once you are there you adhere to their rules and customs - right from eating habits to dress code etc. Somehow that does not strike anyone as ‘imposition’. In contrast none of the western countries expect you to do anything to fit in. Scores of people live acocrding to their rules and are not coerced. All most immigrants want is a way to gell with the larger society. For an immigrant family where the family has to seek out common grounds for interaction - this is one of the ways to do it.
It appears that Muslims need to have more, well, faith in their faith. The ideal way would be that you are able to recieve all the wisdom in the world and still be true to your beliefs. Unless of course you fear that exposure to other ‘truths’ will dilute yours.
Like i said, Muslims give an impression of radical coercion and this can only mean that the product is not good enough for people to choose on their own. Hence force it down their gullet. indeed it is the fastest growing religion so why this fear?? It seems irrational.
wow, we have so much spare time at our disposal that we spend on this discussion here. The writer (poor guy) is only trying to show us a picture of all Pakistanies living in western society and facing these problems. ‘Halloween’ and ‘Thanksgiving’ has nothing to do with any religion. They are social events and to be used for pleasure and having fun, repeat ‘IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY RELEGION’ … why are we so narrow minded? I do not get it.
Its very true that religious zealots often go over board in declaring things un-islamic. Even very personal celebrations like birthdays that have no claim of any religious ties, are deemed un-islamic by some of them.
However, I have seen religious muslims in the west participate in christmas saying that Jesus was also a prophet of Islam. Their opposition to holloween maybe mostly due to its pagan roots. One may not agree with this view point but one should respect it.
As for origins of necktie, these are certainly not christian. It originated from the European thirty year war in mid 1600s and was derived from teh colourful scarves that croatian merceneries wore around their necks. These scarves had no religious connotations and were part of croatian military dress. The french word for tie ‘cravat’ is derived from Croat.
For those Einsteins who found out that hajj is a pagan ritual, Viqar Minai has very eloquently cleared the issue. But maybe it would help them if they could spare some time reading about origins of hajj from different sources instead of getting their”knowledge” only from Pat Robertson’s sermons.
The opposition to basant is much more from general public than from any religious group. The reason is very simple. Once one has seen a child’s bloodied dead body with his throat slit open by a kite wire one becomes vehemently opposed to basant.
I have never been able to figure out the hangups Pakistani fundamentalists have about Basant, some of which shows up in this interaction. True, its antecedents are in Hinduism, but it really is a end of harvest festival, like Thanksgiving in the US. What is the problem with having some innocent fun - now don’t conjure up all the rigmarole about kids falling off rooftops while flying kites. This is akin to the ayatollahs denouncing Nowroz celebrations after they came to power in Iran. Fortunately, Iranians had enough sense to put up a resistance to this blatant attack on their heritage, and the mullahs backed off in trying to denigrate Nowroz. If the Iranians, the Kurds and the Afghans can celebrate a pre Islamic festival, which is part of their heritage, why can’t the Pakistanis accept the fact that Basant is part of their heritage and get the mullahs and their killjoy ilk to back off.
Jay Jay
I agree with you,I wonder how many of the people posting here will have the same view if they were born in different religion.We are still following the faith of our ancestors.The tragedy with muslims is that men like Ibn Rushd were declared heretic.There is no room for reason in any orthodox belief.Prophet Mohammed was a great revolutionary.I sometime wonder what would he say about muslims if he was alive today