My niece Shefa is six years-old and in 1st grade. Alhamdulillah she loves school, and she absolutely adores her teacher. She came to me today with a drawing she made. It was this huge rainbow heart. She asked me if I had any ideas on how to make it more beautiful.
As I looked at her drawing, I could't help but feel sad. My niece, how was I going to explain to her that this day, Valentine's Day which she was so excited about....it wasn't our day. We were, we are Muslims. Valentine's Day is a Christian holiday. I told her to take it some other day. She looked at me like I didn't understand o_O.
"But my classmates are taking it tomorrow"
I looked at her and asked, "Shefa, do you love your teacher every day? For all the days?"
She nodded yes.
"Then why are you giving her a card just that one day?," I asked.
I told her to take it another day, and she agreed. While she still may not understand exactly what I was trying to say, what it means to be Muslim and non-Muslim, at least she knows that this is something Muslims don't do. *Shes smart :D*
We are Muslim, and sometimes that sets us apart from all the people around us. It means not wishing our Christian friend a Happy Easter, Merry Christmas, or in this case, Happy Valentine's Day.
Believe it or not, it even means not greeting our Muslim Brothers and Sisters with these greetings *Doh! :D* or tagging everyone we know on a Facebook e-card photo *watch those notifications go sky-high tomorrow :P*Living here, it gets too easy to learn these habits, to adopt them. The scary thing is, this "adoption" of ours was foretold by Prophet Muhammad (SAW).
It was narrated from Abu Saeed Radhiallahu Anhu that Nabi Salallahu Alaihi Wasalam said, ‘you will certainly follow the ways of those before you, hand span by hand span, cubit by cubit, until even if they entered the hole of a lizard, you will do so too’- we asked ‘O messenger of Allah, do you mean the Jews and the Christians?’ He said, ‘who else’. (Bukhari/ Muslim)
And it's true! When we do it, it doesn't seem like much.
"I mean, I was going to get her a gift anyway, I'll just get it on Valentine's Day""My friend is getting me a present for Christmas, I'll get her something too"
"The costumes are cute, and the kids love candy, we don't believe in Halloween, but that doesn't mean we can't get some candy, lets go trick-or-treating"
Shaitan puts so many thoughts in our heads to lead us astray, and we don't even realize it. We go on thinking its nothing till suddenly we are celebrating all the holidays that belong to the non-Muslims, yet we don't do Qurbani because the farm isn't nearby, ect.
It doesn't seem like anything, but it is.
Valentine's Day has roots way back in Roman times:
Celebrated at the ides of February, or February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.
To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. They would then strip the goat's hide into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets, slapping both women and crop fields with the goat hide. Roman women believed it would make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city's bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen woman.
And they would spend that year together. *Am I the only one that finds this creepy? :-S* After that year, they either get married or do it over again. The Roman Catholic found the idea to be disturbing. *See! I wasn't alone in thinking it's creepy :D * So, they changed the slips to the names of saints which the guys now had to emulate for that year. They also had the Feast of Valentine on this day to try to change the pagans ways.
But back to before the Roman Catholics changed it, the idea of a guy and a girl getting together on February 14th is what some people believe Valentine's Day comes from.
So, the earliest roots of Valentine's Day is a weird, very creepy, pagan roman holiday. But back to before the Roman Catholics changed it, the idea of a guy and a girl getting together on February 14th is what some people believe Valentine's Day comes from.
We may not believe any of it. We might even find the whole thing silly, but if we still say those words, "Happy Valentine's Day," so many decades later, somewhere , some how, we are helping to keep that tradition, that belief alive.
And that belief is SHIRK.
To say the truth, I didn't know the intricacies of Valentine's Day before, and I wished people a Happy Valentine's Day. But as soon as I found out, I stopped. And now I'm telling you, so that you can stop.
Will You?
My sister just sent me the link to this....great blog. I hope you don't mind if I tweet the link. What you are saying is very true. It's doesn't seem like much, saying 'Merry Christmas' to a friend or 'Happy Valentines' but when you stop and look into it, it is connected to shirk, the greatest sin of all. It makes you wonder what else we may do without realising the gravity of it fully. Sometimes I think it's so hard being a Muslim and living in the West but the terrible reality is it's becoming difficult for Muslims to live according to the Quran all over the world, even in 'Islamic' states which only follow Islamic Law selectively and incorrectly. On the hand, we actually do get more freedom to live according to Islam in the West than you would in Bangladesh (and many other Muslim countries) which is steeped so deep in culture and traditions they taken on from their Hindu kin, that the majority of society will actually ridicule you if you are what they deem too religious and place more emphasis on religion than culture. Anyway, sorry for getting sidetracked.
ReplyDeleteSalma.R