Happy Thanksgiving

Another holiday. Another shopping spree. Another Happy Holidays. If we don't believe in God and want to be politically correct at all cost, whom are we giving thanks to? Supercenters or shopping malls? Seriously, why celebrate a holiday that is all about God and His blessings and yet omit the reference to the main focus of celebration? Is it all about God or is it just another excuse to spend/make money?

Thanksgiving is the start of the Advent period and at the same time beginning of the biggest shopping season in America. Fortunately, I've been able to keep myself (more or less) away from such tidings (pun intended) since landing in the US. But this one is more than a shopping spree. It's more of a shopping frenzy.

Knowing about Black Friday, I was thinking how people would line up in front of stores at 4 am in a below freezing temperature. Although it could have been a good opportunity for me to make some interesting observations as a sociologist, I neither felt like waking up at that time, nor saw it in myself to ride my bike in such a cold. Then, watching the news, I found people standing in line since the night before to be the first ones rushing to doorbusters. And they have their rules and principles. If you set up a tent or use heaters in that freezing cold, that's cheating.

And yes, we live in an age of technology. There's Cyber Monday (also known as Black Monday). A cyber version of Black Friday. Here, you don't have to shiver while waiting for the virtual stores to open. You can do it at the comfort of your home (or work, if you're a bit unscrupulous). You can find amazing prices and offers very hard to resist. But even as somebody who has spent over 20 years on computers, I'm not a player in this game.

What interests me the most about this season is the Advent part of it. People gear for Christmas and start decorating their homes, trees and places. And that comes with light decorations. My fascination with light and lighting does not come merely from my electrical engineering background. I have been born that way. My mother tells me when I was a newborn baby, my mood considerably changed in places like Shiraz (my birthplace) rich in lighting and light decorations (and conversely turned gloomy and grumpy in places poor in that respect). Fortunately, the neighborhoods near UT have much for me to visit and enjoy. Just if I can find some time to break my home-campus-home routine.

Multifaith Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is one of the most important holidays in the US. And given its religious backgrounds and its similarities to Mehregan, one of the most fascinating to me. In Mehregan however, Iranians celebrate on sheep instead of turkeys. And in both feasts where celebrations are centered on harvest, I wonder why animals (turkeys or sheep) have to pay the price.

Anyway, attending thanksgiving celebrations (and hence studying religious rituals in churches) was on my to-do list long before coming to the US. However, due to my very heavy schoolwork, I cannot pursue all my wishes this semester. So, I had to choose only one celebration to attend (and even that would put a burden on my time).

When I happened to know about Multifaith Thanksgiving by Multifaith Council of Northwest Ohio, I chose this one. I always love multifaith events. When people sit and learn about how much they share in beliefs and how they worship the same God, they'll no longer waste their time and energy fighting over differences in practice and theology. More people thinking this way and we'll get rid of bigotry. Quoting Dr Martin Luther King, "I have a dream".

Here, representatives of American Indian faith, Baha'i, Baptist, Islam and Mennonites gave speeches to explain how and why we give thanks to God (and I wondered why nobody from Catholicism, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism was present). After the speeches, we had to dance a little before proceeding to refreshments. A Sufi guitarist gave us the lines to repeat and share the heavenly peace.

Well, as a Muslim, I find the blend of Sufism in the US an example of commodification of religion. For more on this topic, you can read Consuming Religion and Jesus in Disneyland; although I don't agree with all the arguments in these books (especially the first one that at times is overly cynical and sophistic). In short, these books try to explain how consumer culture (and its freedom of choice entailment) in Western postmodern culture, would lead to cherry picking from different religions, resulting in a new conglomerate of elements (bricolage or salad, depending on how you want to look at it) that have lost their attachment to their original sources and hence are devoid of their contextual meaning and cultural/historical setting.

Sufism by and in itself is an offshoot of Islam produced this way 10 centuries ago. But while original Sufism could still be considered Islamic (and orthodox Muslims vehemently dispute such a view), my personal experience, study and familiarity with it in Iran, make me believe what I see in the US is a clear example of the arguments in the above mentioned books. Anyway, back to the party.

We left the program for the refreshments singing "Metta, Karuna, Mudita, Upeka". And after we entered the fellowship hall, we made two counter-rotating concentric circles with the American Sufi guitarist in the center (some sort of Murshid?) and continued singing and dancing. As a conservative Muslim, I found myself in a funny situation. I don't have much problem with Sufism but I don't feel comfortable practicing what I don't completely believe in. And as I was standing beside Imam Ibrahim Abdulrahim from Masjid of Al-Islam, I found him in the same funny situation and feeling. But in the meantime, I found it interesting to sing the following while rotating and holding hand with people on my sides:

"Fill your cup, drink it up, ya Allah Allah"

Well, at least I felt at home with this line, given my lifetime familiarity with Rumi as an Iranian Muslim.

Nice Photos from Iran

One of my friends sent me a link to this slideshow page. As a former(?) nature photographer, I already knew that my country is such a lovely beautiful place, but I was still stunned by some of the photos in this slideshow. I wish they had put some Iranian music accompanying the photos. Anyway, nice job.