Sententia...

US Elections

2006-11-09T09:44:00.000-05:00

The Democrats have won control of the House, and have at least half of the Senate at this point. I cheered them on, but they must not forget that they came to power in large part due to the voters' repudiation of the Bush-Republican Congress's policies. We can argue whether it was Iraq, corruption, Social Security, medical care, or (in my dreams) human rights violations, within and without the country. However, the fact remains that the American voters want something to change, and it's not the economy, stupid!

Democrats will do well not to forget this "mandate". Some of their election time antics were down-right stupid. They took polarizing positions just for their own sake. I don't need to tell them that good governance is still appreciated, whereas a juvenile attitude of "since you did that, I'll do this" will not be appreciated by anyone but the very extreme left wing. That's not who voted them in. America's middle did. Think about the huge problems facing us, both as Americans and citizens of Earth, instead of just "reacting".

The Identity Crisis

2006-09-14T08:58:00.000-04:00

I just heard a piece on NPR Morning Edition examining the lives of two Muslim American girls who have Algerian parents and wear the hijab. Two snippets that struck me:

* Who am I? When asked in the US, the girls would say America. When asked in Lebanon, they'd proudly say "American". The response to "where are you from" , that eternal questions all immigrants face day in and day out, depends on what makes you different from the environment you're in. Not simply a red, white, and blue issue.

* One of the girls' moments of reflection: she went to a Muslim school in Paris, with 120 Muslim girls. They told our subject, in tears, how the most difficult decision of their lives was to decide to either give up the scarf or give up schooling. Our subject kept thinking how lucky she was that she was an American...

Rule of law

2006-09-07T02:17:00.000-04:00

Some Supreme Court judge once said that the Constitution wasn't meant to be a suicide pact. Ok. I can live with that. But I also believe in "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". And there can be few more extraordinary claims than that the Constitution, heck, the whole American system of governance and jurispudence, is incapable of handling the so-called War on Terror.

CIA today admitted to having run jails abroad, even if they held terror masterminds such as Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. Gitmo has been making a mockery of the US's respect for law, both internal and the external one it is party to, for almost 5 years now.

America may be able win its battles against the armed misfits who are gunning for it and everything else that doesn't fit their very, very narrow world view. Money, guns, politics, technology, all of which USA has quite a bit of, can be brought to bear on this. But will it, in the process, lose the bit of respect it had in the moderates and intelligent people of the Muslim world? I was on the other side. We all despised the US for its clout, much as we would despise a rich neighbor. But we respected American society, because, unlike our own, we believed that it stood for principles, at least internally. We were awed by concepts like Miranda rights, that even presidents could get thrown out if they broke the law, and so on. The American dream was not just about rags to riches. It was about respect for the fellow man, by and large. Or at least the fellow citizen. Even then we could never understand why America supported Israel so blindly. But we thought it was not only the land of the free, it was land of the fair.

I doubt many think of it that way. We could have looked away from profiling of Muslims in the days after 9/11. We could understand the lashout at the Taliban, who were stupid enough to not turn tails and give up their links to Al Qaeda. But what we can not understand is how the US made a mockery of habeus corpus, that one law that we all aspire to in our societies. We couldn't understand why the American president defended a prison on an island using the argument that it was beyond the courts' reach!!! And we watched in horror the tragic comedy of errors as the USA, that great technological and powerful nation, failed to find the weapons of mass destruction that it used as a justification to fight a war. We watched in horror as the evidence that was enough to cost hundreds and then thousands of Iraqi innocents' lives, vanish like a desert mirage. We watched in horror as we were treated to an illusionist's hand-trickery, in blaming the Iraqis for not keeping records of destruction of stockpiles, dammit, or of secret meetings with Al Qaeda in European capitals. We watched in horror as the US government showed how good they were at waging war but botching up peace. And we watched in horror how Iraq slipped into sectarian anarchy, with enough "invaders" to sow division but not enough to bring peace to the streets. We were confused why Saddam, hated as he was, could keep the peace but the world's mightiest military can't. But most of all, we watched in horror how the anarchy in Iraq became a training ground and a recruitment call for militants, just as Afghanistan was in the 198o's. Oh, and we watched in even more horror how the American people voted the same government in again for another four years of the same. Maybe we can't blame them. Even our puny, jailed, beat-up opposition parties do a better job than the American oppostition did.

This has become an anti-Bush policies rant, but the point was much simpler, and let me return to it in the closing. We, who liked to think of ourselves as the moderates, as the critical thinkers of our societies, respected and admired the US for its respect for law. We argued to the fanatics that we must all live within a rule set, and improve the system, not always be tearing it down. But our poster-child abandoned us. We can point to no one and say: hey, look there, a legal system that, for all its imperfections, works! Let's build one with our own laws, one that respects all men equally, one that is derived from our traditions, from our religious beliefs, and live within it, instead of always pointing fingers at others.

Thanks, Mr. Bush. You seem to have bin Laden's playbook all figured out. I wonder who will be deemed by historians to have succeeded in ultra-polarizing the world in the 21st century, bin Laden or you. We may yet hail you as the enabler of "Islamic fascism", yes, you, a man who can lead the world and has the best minds in the world advising him if he wants. A crazed, messed up weirdo hidden in a cave somewhere can not turn the world around. You can.

Gaming the Supreme Court

2006-04-03T14:57:00.000-04:00

Supreme Court Rejects Jose Padilla Case

Congrats to the Bush administration. It has succeeded in gaming the US judicial system at the highest level.

I am no neophyte to the appellate process and the Anglo-Saxon judicial principle that prevents hypothetical questions being asked of the court. However, as the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted, following one path for 4 years and then dropping it just as it was about to be reviewed, possibly unfavorably, and yet not conceding that the original course of action was faulty, is just plain wrong. IMHO, the government is gaming the lag in the appellate system of checks and balances to buy itself a 4-yr grace period where it can do what it wants.

The Supreme Court has now ducked the issue of suspension of Bill of Rights twice. They may have at least issued a non-binding opinion that would indicate to the Bush administration, the American people, and the rest of the world where it stood on this issue. This is just very, very disappointing. Not the brightest moment in the history of the American Constitution's system of checks and balances.

When democracy fails the US

2006-04-03T12:48:00.000-04:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4861320.stm

I belong to a country with a chequered past when it comes to democracy. For many, many years, we heard successive American governments telling us how democracy was an absolute goal. It didn't matter whether elected governments robbed us blind. They were still elected, and hence inherently legal.

Starting with Hamas's clean and fair election to power, the Europeans are learning what the US should have learnt earlier from democracy in Latin America: the democratic process is no guarantee of a government "friendly" to Western interests. The US should have learnt that even earlier, with Chavez's rise to power, and as this BBC article points out, left-liberal, anti-US governments are being elected freely and fairly to power all over Latin America. How will the West deal with this outcome of democracy in action?

Oh, and could Iraq be the next place where an elected government is not overthrown ala Iran 1979 but turns away from its American friends because of perceived ethnic+security policies? Far-fetched? Read some of the reaction of the Shi'ites to American military response to ethnic strife there...

On children, life-style, and differences between European and American attitudes

2006-03-31T11:48:00.000-05:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4813590.stm

Interesting points raised in this issue are that a number of people are choosing not to have kids because of lifestyle choices, not because they are workaholics. This goes against a reason often given about lower birth rates: women are too busy/career-oriented to raise families. Plus, should governments really be encouraging people to have more kids? Wouldn't it be better if we just encouraged more migration of populations from the over-stressed parts of the planet? The US doesn't seem to have the problem of a stagnating population, in large part because of its crop of immigrants from Latin America and other cultures who still raise large families.

Oh, speaking of the US, how would this be seen in this country?

The Separation of Science and State

2006-02-08T14:35:00.000-05:00

There is a fairly well-documented tendency by the current White House
administration to make political appointments to various science-related
agencies, such as EPA and NASA. While this may be not a novel practice,
what is novel is how brazenly some of these appointees are pushing a
decidedly political and non-scientific agenda at these agencies.
Luckily, a few of these appointees seem to be even less qualified than
their credentials suggest, like Mr. Deutsch at NASA, who lied about
receiving his undergraduate degree from Texas A&M University.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fahd/misc/news_archive/20060207_NYT.pdf

It is one thing to debate whether Supreme Court nominations should be
made based on ideology. It is another thing to assign political hacks
and lackeys to ensure that scientific output from government agencies is
twisted to fall in line with the Executive branch's desires.

I'll see if I can find more of these stories, and attach the links to
this post.

My thoughts on cartoons

2006-02-08T10:31:00.000-05:00

Freedom of speech vs. religious sensitivity. There are many ways of seeing this debate. I'll try to be brief in my postings:

1. Should freedom of speech be exercised solely to prove its existence, especially when the subject matter is unnecessarily provocative?

2. Is it or is it not: Secularism, a god in the grand debate of "My god is better than yours"? Seculars cry foul when they are criticized for criticizing another religion's dogma, but then again, what exactly is the variant of "freedom of speech" in the context of #1 above?

3. The European press rode their high horse, but neglected what I personally consider is their duty: start or contribute to a debate on religion and violence. The artist who drew the bomb-turbaned Muhammad obviously has a message. Had that message been put in words, and backed by logic and actual historical facts, there could be a debate, rebuttals, you know, "democratic" discourse. But it was more fun to caricature, wasn't it?

4. To the fools who are going around destroying embassies and killing ppl (or getting themselves killed, at least): the Prophet, peace be upon him, never took himself so seriously as to go crazy on the people who abused him. Oh, and they abused his person, embargoed his family members to death, horribly tortured his friends and followers. Perhaps you need to study your religion, specifically the life of the Prophet himself, a bit better before you go off in the streets, following the latest power-hungry mullah. If you really want respect, communicate your beliefs to those who do not understand it, instead of trying to kick them (and falling over in the process).

5. Finally, for those of my readers who do not know me, I have no common grounds with Holocaust deniers or for that matter, Israel deniers. The Holocaust happened, and it was a great human tragedy, not just a Jewish tragedy, no matter how it is spun today. The State of Israel exists, and we have to recognize it as such and find a way to live with it peacefully. However, if freedom of speech is absolute, and religious sensitivities have no place in deciding what to print in secular press, then I propose my own cartoon: a rabbi, holding up a German/French bank with a representation of the millions who died in the Holocaust, and milking that the economies for all they're worth. Let's see if that tickles the European funny bones.

Getting the most out of water

2004-12-01T13:50:00.000-05:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4048719.stm

In northern Brazil, residents in the town of Oroba are using an altogether different method in order to purify water and prevent disease.

The town's inhabitants have taken to a surprisingly simple process called Sodis (Solar Water Disinfection Process).

There are several stages to Sodis. Firstly, a clean, two-litre bottle needs to be filled up to three-quarters of its volume with water.

The bottle is shaken for 20 seconds to oxygenate the water. Then, the rest of the bottle is filled and the top screwed on.

It is then placed on a rooftop in direct sunlight for six hours. The ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the Sun's rays eliminates virtually all disease-causing bacteria, viruses and micro-organisms.

"This method is very efficient if you follow the simple procedures," says Professor Jose Euclides Paternini of the Unicamp University, Sao Paolo.

"The Sodis method can be used in many countries, but especially those close to the equator with high solar radiation, and where the population has no access to conventional water treatment."

Luiz Barbosa has been a community health worker for 10 years, looking after 118 families in Oroba. He has observed the difference Sodis has made to the health of his community.

"The water treatment we are using here in this municipality is Sodis - that is purification through the Sun's rays - and it is working well because the children are healthy, smiling and they're enjoying a healthier life," he explains.

Very interesting... a cheap, easy way to obtain potable water. I wonder if there have been any scientific tests to determine what is killed and what is not. TDS and other chemical toxins are probably not cleaned by this...

2004-03-17T16:04:00.000-05:00

Did Islam influence the federalist system of government established by the US Constitution?
aka
The Muslims' Illusions of Grandeur

Email forwards are more thought-provoking than I am usually willing to admit. Here's one I got recently:

One thing that was interesting was attendance for a lecture given by a Lebanese woman who is a professor of law in the US. She is a specialist in WS constitutional law. She has done some original research and found out that one of the founders of the US constitution (Thomas Jefferson) owned a copy of the Slate translated QurÂan that was two parts. Slate's first part was about the Prophet (SWS) and his life, etc and the second was the QurÂan, as we know it. She discovered that by reviewing Jefferson's library that was donated to the library of congress. She says that the form of federalism that was adopted in the US constitution was not known in Europe or anywhere else. She thinks it came from the (Meethaq al Madina) that the Prophet wrote, giving Jewish and Moslem tribes each their own religion, etc but all one community. Jefferson replaced the tribes with the states and here you have the federalist system. Also, the election (Al bai'ah) and how the Prophet only became the ruler after the people elected him, a system not known elsewhere 15 centuries ago. Also,al Shurah (al Ijtihaad, etc. all things of democracy). It is too bad that the Ommayad's (Ibn Abe Sufian) made it into an inheritance and from then on it became dynasties following each other, without shura or bai'ah, when the Prophet (SWS) himself, did not name a successor....but left it to the people to choose. You know, we all know all these things, but not in the context of the US constitution. put together, it is a very powerful force for democracy in Islamic countries, which we have not known since al khulafa al rashedeen. Maybe only in the time of the Califah Omar, who was the third and then Califah Abdel Aziz, whose nickname was el Adl, because he was so just. She also spoke of Moslem women's rights, and how they have a separate zimah maleyah, etc. also not known in Europe except many centuries later. As you can imagine, the audience of Muslims and Americans, the Americans were in shock. It appears that we Muslims have been unable to organize properly and get our message to the larger community. One last observation, she noted that Moslem immigrants, many of them engineers and doctors, etc but not many are lawyers (Code Napoleon in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon) is not applicable to the Anglo laws of US and UK. Lawyers are mostly the ones who are dealing with constitutional issues, Public information, etc. that is partly a reason for Moslems not getting their case articulated well.

Excuse the slightly irate nature of my response:

The Islamic form of government is not democracy, it is a meritocratic theocracy. There is no provision for everyone to vote, and the ruler is not picked by all state citizens, only Muslims. If I am not wrong, the guidance is to "pick the best amongst you" where the "you" refers to the group of learned Muslims, the elders of society, so as to speak. Finally, in a democracy the final word is that of the majority. In a theocracy, as in Islamic government, there are certain inalienable rulesi.e.,e. the Quran. The US Constitution is not the same, because it can be ammeded by a popular vote. Hence, its tenents are ultimately due to the people's willingness to codify those tenents.

As for Jefferson, I am sure he, together with many other learned people, did study the Islamic tradition, if for no other reason than that the West did not have the same cultural ascendancy over Islam back then. However, the concepts that the founding fathers espoused in the Constitution are a more direct outgrowth of the Magna Carta movement and individualism, plus the Church of England's oppression of certain religous sections and European conflict between the religious establishments and government, and finally the failure of the confederation model (tried for a few decades before the US Consitution was drawn up) are the most direct forming factors for the US federalist system.

We Muslims suffer from the same self-centerism that Americans do, that all good things must somehow come from us. We have a proud history of achievement and our influence is wide-spread, but unsubstantiated claims such as this only hurt us, not help us. We don't need illusions of grandeur. What we need are practical solutions.

2004-03-09T12:41:00.001-05:00

Young Americans who pledge abstinence have the same rates of STDs as those who do not, a new study says.

I thought I had lost the entry below, so here's another version of the same argument:

Burying your head in the sand is no way to tackle the very real problem of sexual activity in teens. Talk about how to teach them to protect themselves without seeming to give them a license. Talk to them about the benefits of abstinence until you find the right person. Help them. But don't expect them to be perfect, or to do exactly what you want them to do. They are human beings too, you know. It's a shame that the kids who take on the challenge of abstinence suffer from the same STD rates as those who don't, simply becasue their adults equated abstinence with ignorance. If these kids were made to realize their fallibility and were prepared too, imagine how much anguish would have been prevented...

2004-03-09T12:27:00.000-05:00

See previous post
I've always found the argument against sex ed to be a bit unsettling. Call it my left-wing tendencies, but more information is always better, not worse. I understand that there is a line between teaching teenagers how to protect themselves and promoting sexual activity. However, we need to talk about where that line is, not about abolishing one side altogether. Should we not teach our kids how to avoid sexual predators, or to confide in us if someone abuses them in a sexual way? We find a way of balancing it, by not keeping our children indoors all the time and yet making them aware of the dangers they face. Sexuality is a difficult subject to talk about, especially with teenagers where Mother Nature is often making our task so much harder. But this study provides solid evidence for the argument that simply assuming that kids won't do it because you don't want them to doesn't work. We aren't perfect. I will warn my children of the moral and physical dangers of multiple partner sex. I will share with them my experience, that sex is best abstained from until you have found someone you want to spend the rest of your life with. If you believe in marriage being that commitment, then this translates into abstinence from pre-marital sex. And I will not give my son or daughter a condom to carry around in his or her purse, because they may be unduly influenced by my role in their life and construe this as a license, not as a precaution. That's the kind of life I'd draw. But sex ed is definitely in. If my child is going to make what I believe may be a mistake, I don't want it to alter their lives irrevocably. STDs, esp. AIDS, or pregnancies, even those aborted early, will do that to a child, you know.

These guys, on the other hand, are probably better off in Saudi Arabia: Powell's condoms comments draw ire. Kudos, Powell, but what happened to you, my man?

2004-03-01T13:11:00.000-05:00

The Atkins diet - and others that limit carbohydrates - are likely to put you in a bad mood, research has found.

Isn't it amazing how good eating habits are so hard to maintain, and yet along comes a guy who says, eat as much bacon as you want (exaggeration), and people just refuse to let go, no matter what other doctors, and the not-so-common common sense, says?

Let's talk in simplistic terms. It takes more energy (a tad bit) to digest meats than bread. Fine. Most people find meat more filling than bread. Fine. So here's a proposed diet: reduce refined, starchy foods (read bread) and increase protien uptake (chicken, turkey?). As it is, refined carbs are mostly a human creation, not a natural one. There's nothing wrong with substituting that morning bagel with fruit, or cereal with milk.

But when someone tells you to eat saturated fat, yes, saturated fat, as up to a fifth of your diet, shouldn't that set off all sorts of alarms ringing?

Cliches have the annoying habit of being true. You can not in fact have your cake and eat it, no matter what anyone else says. It's time to lay this myth to rest.

2004-02-27T13:20:00.000-05:00

Who will sit on the throne of the lingua franca?

Last night, I was reading the WSJ. The front page carried an article about the Chinese demanding technology transfers as part of doing business in China. GE, for example, had to share its expertise on building turbines (they put the R&D bill at half a billion US$) with their Chinese partners. Of course, no one's forcing them to sell to the Chinese and hence share their knowhow, but obviously the leverage that the Chinese have due to their huge market is enormous. Anyhow, I was thinking that if the Chinese continue to play smart, perhaps my children would learn Chinese in schools for the same reason I learned English: you can't go anywhere in the job market of 2030 if you can't speak Chinese, the language of the new economic powerhouse. Just as the US drives the world economy now, the Chinese may be driving it in the latter half of the century, not due to a decline in the US economy per se but due to the tremendous explosion of economic activity in both China and India. Lo and behold, this morning CNN carried a well-researched article on just this topic!

Expert: New 'must learn' language likely to be Mandarin

2004-02-26T16:12:00.000-05:00

The resilience of Tony Blair

CNN coverage of Claire Short's comments

Ok, so either this lady is lying through her teeth, or Mr. Blair has some explaining to do. You know, I kinda like the guy. He has a bit of charisma, something I sure can't say about GW. Call me shallow; I like my leaders to carry themselves like leaders. So, as I was saying, if Ms. Short is speaking the truth, that she saw transcripts of Kofi Annan's phone conversations, then someone's gotta 'fess up. And here's Blair: "Whether intentionally or not, those who do attack the work our security services are doing undermine the essential security of this country, ... The fact that those allegations were made, I think, is deeply irresponsible."

Hmph. You are confusing me, man. Learn some lessons from your alleged Texan buddy's alleged shooting-from-the-hip mantra. Speak straight. Are you saying Short's lying? Or are you saying that she isn't lying, but if someone in the government asks the intel guys to do something ultra vires, you just clam up and say nothing? Au contraire, my friend. The damage will not be to national security. The damage should be to those who ordered this illegal act. Unless, of course, it's you ;)

"Blair said intelligence agents "always act in accordance with domestic and international law." " (CNN article above). Very funny. We know how law-abiding intel services are, esp. when asked by the PM to do something.

British politics must be pretty staid. The leader of one of the parliamentary houses resigns in protest on your policies, so does another cabinet minister, you commit soldiers to an internationally condemned war based on questionable evidence in spite of widespread domestic opposition, can't find WMDs you were so certain of, and now, another former cabinet minister says she saw transcripts of the UN Sec General's phone conversations, tapped on your govt.'s orders by your security agencies. And you are still the PM? Nice job, Tony, nice job!

2004-02-25T19:30:00.000-05:00

Rebuttal to "How Birthday Parties Started"

IMHO, this argument is flawed. Let me take it one step at at time:

The misrepresentation of birthdays as an occasion with religious connotations:
Look at the dictionary definition of the word "festival": An occasion for feasting or celebration, especially a day or time of religious significance that recurs at regular intervals.

"Festival" has a decided religious undertone, and mostly a public one as well. All the ahadith quoted here and the sunnah mentioned is clearly aimed at establishing an identity for the Muslim ummah through quashing public celebrations that contravened the religous spirit of Islam. Different practices relates to different modes of worship, different focii of public life. All the events mentioned are "festivals of the people", and Muslims are warned against these because they infringe on our identity. Truly, if we celebrated Christmas in the same spirit as Christians do, then what will be the difference between us?

A birthday is mostly a private, family-oriented celebration. You can find the roots of any current human practice in ancient religions. Of course, it is very well documented that nearly everything that people of the pre-Rennaisance world did was guided by religion or superstition, whatever you want to call it, because so little was understood of the world. Lightening, sunrise, floods, crops, everything was accorded to some supernatural entity or force. But my celebration of a birthday is has no pagan religious overtones. In fact, I thank Allah for His gifts to my loved one and me. It is an event only in that I take time to convey to a person my appreciation of them, to explicate that I care for them, and no more. I do not wish to please Artemis.

Is a birthday always "kosher"? I don't believe so. Islam gives us guidelines, and it is quite clear from the extravagances around us that we don't always obey those guidelines. A wedding can be true to the Islamic spirit, or it can abuse it to no end. So it is with birthdays. On my mother's recent birthday, our family gave her gifts, wished her, told her how much we loved and appreciated her and her role in our life. We cut a simple cake, not to please Greco-Roman gods but to satisfy our own sweet tooth. The tradition of eating sweetmarts on an occasion of joy transcends religion. The Prophet (PBUH) himself encouraged the giving of gifts, because it increases our love and affection of each other. And how does it contravene Islamic spirit, or incur Allah's anger, to appreciate our loved ones and make them happy? One can argue against spending excessive amounts of money on lavish gatherings and even the practice of sending birthday cards, but is it too much to set one token day apart in a year to appreciate our friends and family?

Is it the choice of a particular day that bothers us? We have many other secular, non-Islamic celebration days. Each Muslim country has its own independence day. The celebration of August 14th sets Pakistani Muslims apart from their Ummah, and yet objections are never raised against nationalism. In fact, I don't think any religous leaders ever denied sending the Pakistani people a congratulatory message on the birth of their country, their nation. If this does not ruffle any feathers and generates no email chains, why do we take pleasure in condemning a private celebration of our loved ones?

You will not need to persuade me to denounce extravagance and waste, at birthday parties, weddings, Eid celebrations, or anything else. You do not need to warn me against blindly following every tradition I come across. But birthdays, celebrated with simplicity within the spirit of Islam to appreciate our loved ones and with gratitude to the Creator, are misplaced targets of our search for a Muslim identity, our quest to be better Muslims. The falsehoods are in our minds, not in the birthday. My identity does not lie in a close-minded negation of everything else around me. Islam enriches my life by offering me intellectual freedom to judge what is not explicit in the primary sources of religious law, which is opposite of the stifling dogmatism of orthodox Christianity, Jewism, etc. We spend too much time on the minutia of others and are often blind to the big things that are wrong with our lives :(

Ah, and yes, regarding the brilliant ending note of the forwarded email: With due deference to the Sahaba and the Islamic tradition, I ask you - would you like a United States, a Canada, a Great Britian, where you would be prohibited from celebrating Eid? Read that line again, but in a different light now: "If the Muslims have agreed to prevent them from celebrating openly, how could it be right for the Muslims to celebrate them?"

2004-02-25T19:20:00.000-05:00

This article was sent to me by some family members. I am usually passive/lazy, take your pic, but then sometimes I like venting. Here's the article. The response is in the next post.

How Birthday Parties Started

The tradition of birthday parties started in Europe a long time ago. It was feared that evil spirits were particularly attracted to people on their birthdays. To protect them from harm, friends and family would to come be with the birthday person and bring good thoughts and wishes. Giving gifts brought even more good cheer to ward off the evil spirits. This is how birthday parties began.

At first it was only kings who were recognized as important enough to have a birthday celebration (maybe this is how the tradition of birthday crowns began?). As time went by, children became included in birthday celebrations. The first children's birthday parties occurred in Germany and were called Kinderfeste.

The Greeks believed that everyone had a protective spirit or daemon who attended his birth and watched over him in life. This spirit had a mystic relation with the god on whose birthday the individual was born.

The Romans also subscribed to this idea. This notion was carried down in human belief and is reflected in the guardian angel, the fairy godmother and the patron saint. The custom of lighted candles on the cakes started with the Greeks. Honey cakes round as the moon and lit with tapers were placed on the temple altars of (Artemis). Birthday candles, in folk belief, are endowed with special magic for granting wishes. Lighted tapers and sacrificial fires have had a special mystic significance ever since man first set up altars to his gods. The birthday candles are thus an honor and tribute to the birthday child and bring good fortune.

These birthday celebrations also involve imitation of the Jews and Christians in their birthday celebrations. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, warning us against following their ways and traditions: "You would follow the ways of those who came before you step by step, to such an extent that if they were to enter a lizard's hole, you would enter it too." They said, "O Messenger of Allah, (do you mean) the Jews and Christians?" He said, "Who else?" (Reported by al-Bukhari and Muslim). The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) also said: "Whoever imitates a people is one of them." (Fataawa Islamiyyah, 1/115)

Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah (may Allah have mercy on him) said in his commentary on the ayah (interpretation of the meaning), "And those who do not witness falsehood (al-zoor)" (al-Furqan 25:72): As regards the festivals of the mushrikeen: they combine confusion, physical desires and falsehood, there is nothing in them that is of any religious benefit, and the instant gratification involved in them only ends up in pain. Thus they are falsehood, and witnessing them means attending them.

This ayah itself praises and commends (those who do not witness falsehood), which has the meaning of urging people to avoid taking part in their festivals and other kinds of falsehood. We understand that it is bad to attend their festivals because they are called al-zoor (falsehood).

It indicates that it is haram to do this for many reasons, because Allah has called it al-zoor. Allah condemns the one who speaks falsehood (al-zoor) even if no-one else is harmed by it, as in the ayah forbidding zihaar (a form of divorce in which the man says to his wife "you are to me like the back of my mother"), where He says (interpretation of the meaning): "And verily, they utter an ill word and a lie (zooran)" (al-Mujadilah 58:2). And Allah says (interpretation of the meaning): "So shun the abomination of idols, and shun lying speech (false statements) (al-zoor)". (al-Hajj 22:30). So the one who does al-zoor is condemned in this fashion.

In the Sunnah: Anas ibn Maalik (may Allah be pleased with him) said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) came (to Madinah) and they had two days in which they would (relax and) play. He said, What are these two days? They said, We used to play (on these two days) during the Jahiliyyah. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: Allah has given you something better instead of them: Yawm al-Duha (Eid al-Adha) and Yawm al-Fitr (Eid al-Fitr). (Reported by Abu Dawood).

This indicates clearly that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) definitely forbade his ummah to celebrate the festivals of the kuffar, and he strove to wipe them out by all possible means. The fact that the religion of the People of the Book is accepted does not mean that their festivals are approved of or should be preserved by the ummah, just as the rest of their kufr and sins are not approved of. Indeed, the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) went to great lengths to command his ummah to be different from them in many issues that are mubaah (permitted) and in many ways of worship, lest that lead them to be like them in other matters too. This being different was to be a barrier in all aspects, because the more different you are from the people of Hell, the less likely you are to do the acts of the people of Hell.

The first of them is: The hadith "Every people has its festival, and this is our festival" implies exclusivity, that every people has its own festival, as Allah says (interpretation of the meaning): "For every nation there is a direction to which they face (in their prayers) (al-Baqarah 2:148) and to each among you, We have prescribed a law and a clear way" (al-Maaidah 5:48). This implies that each nation has its own ways. The laam in li-kulli (for every, to each) implies exclusivity. So if the Jews have a festival and the Christians have a festival, it is just for them, and we should not have any part in it, just as we do not share their qiblah (direction of prayer) or their laws.

The second of them is: one of the conditions set out by Umar ibn al-Khattaab (may Allah be pleased with him) and agreed upon by the Sahabah and by all the fuqaha after them is: that those of the People of the Book who have agreed to live under Islamic rule (ahl al-dhimmah) should not celebrate their festivals openly in Daar al-Islam (lands under Islamic rule). If the Muslims have agreed to prevent them from celebrating openly, how could it be right for the Muslims to celebrate them? If a Muslim celebrates them, is that not worse than if a kafir does so openly?