On Eid Fetr (which was a month ago), I received a toe-tag in my department mailbox, presumably intended to invite me to a Halloween party. Although I immediately realized what it was about, I found the joke absurd. The guy who'd put it in my mailbox, is one of the strongest proponents of multiculturalism. Pondering about how to react, I wrote a note on the back of the toe-tag and put it in his mailbox, saying that it was not the best way to greet a Muslim on one of his most important religious holidays.
As could be understood from my Trick or Treat post last year, I don't have a very high opinion about pagan traditions, especially in a country that boasts having been founded on religion. And what I don't like the most is double standards about being politically correct.
People feel compelled to take out Jesus from Christmas and replace Merry Christmas with a spiritless greeting like Happy Holidays, under the pretext of not offending people who don't believe in Jesus. Yet, they don't feel the same about a pagan holiday; they have to mention the name of the holiday all the time while greeting others and they feel everybody must respect or at least be interested in Halloween. That was how that toe-tag ended up in my mailbox. The sender had good friendly intentions of course. But I wonder how he assumed that I, a conservative Muslim, might find a toe-tag invitation to a pagan holiday interesting.
And yesterday morning, while I was rushing from one of my discussion sections for Introduction to Sociology to the next section, one of my colleagues saw me and greeted me with Happy Halloween. I muttered something like "thank you", failing to muster a better reaction and hurried on. Interestingly, some of my students wrote Happy Halloween at the top of their quiz. Although all of them knew me to be a Muslim from Iran, they probably thought it was a good way to welcome their TA in their culture.
I can appreciate such good intentions, but why shouldn't anybody bother to complement a religious person based on his religious beliefs? I think multiculturalism is about accepting and respecting people (including their beliefs) as they are. If you presume somebody would feel the same about your cultural values as you do, that's not multiculturalism; rather, it's melting pot and cultural assimilation. Undergraduate student may not analyze things to such levels. But what about graduate students or professors?
As I've mentioned at the end of my Eid Fetr post, apart from my Muslim friends, the only person who spontaneously greeted me for the Eid was one of our liberal professors who (through her frequent visits to Bangladesh) has good awareness about Muslim concerns. And well, after I put cookies in our grad lounge, one of my class-mates showed up to thank me for the cookies and in the meantime, asked me how should she greet me for the occasion. While I'm continuously showered with homosexuality awareness info, multiculturalists don't seem to be as much obsessed with awareness about religious values.
In this country, respecting one's culture is promoted as far as it has nothing to do with religion. If you go to people's door and call them to Jesus or God, you're pushing your beliefs on them and you could even end up in court for unwarranted soliciting (well, of course I don't enjoy evangelists knocking on my door either). Yet, presuming people would respect something they actually don't, (like trick or treating at their home or greeting them in a way they don't like) is about culture and tradition and it's perfectly OK. But maybe the importance of this holy night is not limited just to ordinary people. It appears that even among the religious folks, it's very important to observe Halloween and trick or treat.
On Thursday night, I had been invited to speak on an interfaith panel in a church in Harrisburg (a small town to our east). I was hesitant about going, as it overlapped one of my classes. Right before the class, I couldn't resist the temptation and talked to the professor and got his permission to go. And I'm glad I did. If I had not gone there, there would had been no representative for Islam in that interfaith dialog panel. Not surprisingly, our audience in that church were quite a few; the rest had something more important to do: trick or treat. And I could feel the disappointment in the words and face of our host (the pastor of that church).
The panel was about religion and culture. We, as international students, were expected to explain about our religion, the impact of the culture of our country on our religion and the influence of religion on daily life. As my participation in the panel was a last-minute decision, I had nothing prepared and I had to quickly jot down some notes on the way to Harrisburg. To explain the importance of Islam as agency of change, I preferred to begin my talk with a description of daily life in its birthplace, instead of my own country.
Arabia was one of the most wicked places of earth before Islam. People's hobbies were about getting drunk, gang-raping, fighting each other, sucking blood from the veins of live animals, and engraving their baby daughters alive. Over the course of centuries, they had turned Kaaba (a house of worship built by Abraham to pray to God) into a temple to venerate the idols they had carved out of stone and wood and to offer those idols tributes. And stratification was rampant in Arabia. And women were not even second gender; they were merely objects to satisfy sexual desires of men. Islam came to abolish all these abominations.
And when early Muslims fled the brutal persecution by infidels in Mecca and established their society in Medina, one of the first things they did, was writing a constitution and bill of rights that above all ensured equality. In Quran, it's clearly stated that people, regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender and wealth, are worthy only for their belief and obedience to God. Basically, the word Islam means submission to the rules of God, instead of following our own whims. Other frequent themes in Quran are the importance of faith and good deeds at the same time, the value of knowledge and thinking about the creation to realize the magnificence of God's job and of course practicing faith in a communal way to reinforce it.
When Islam spread its wings into my country however, it faced a different environment than Arabia. People in Persia already worshiped one God and the culture of the country already revolved around their religion, Zoroastrianism. When Islam entered Persia 14 centuries ago, people of my country simply took progressive elements of Islam and internalized it in their rich culture. Back then, religion and culture were inseparable in Persian life and the same is true nowadays. In Iranian culture, almost all holidays have religious roots one way or another, either in Islam or in ancient Zoroastrianism.
Then, I proceeded to explain about my early childhood exposure to religious diversity in my beloved neighborhood that I used to refer to as little Jerusalem, as described at the beginning of this earlier post on Prayer in America. And as an example of amalgamation of religion and culture in present day Iran, I explained about Ashura and its importance in Iranian culture. And I elaborated on what I've written at the end of my Nowruz 1386 post.
The audience were surprised to hear that even non-Muslim Iranians like Zoroastrians, Armenians and Jews participate and sometimes contribute to it by way of providing nazri meals for Muslim mourners. And I could see the puzzled looks when I said that Jews in Isfahan have their own Hussainia, commemorating and mourning the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. I guess these facts were much in contradiction to the usual nonsense they hear about Iran and Islam in the US media.
All in all, it was an interesting panel, providing an opportunity for all of us to hear about different religions first hand. Dialogs of this kind would be the most efficient way to fight bigotry and prejudice. And well, as a side benefit, I could get out of Carbondale for a few hours (normally, going to Kroger for my grocery shopping, is the farthest I can get away from school for a break). Coming back to Carbondale, I realized that it's been exactly 3 months since I landed in this depressing small town in the middle of nowhere.
As could be understood from my Trick or Treat post last year, I don't have a very high opinion about pagan traditions, especially in a country that boasts having been founded on religion. And what I don't like the most is double standards about being politically correct.
People feel compelled to take out Jesus from Christmas and replace Merry Christmas with a spiritless greeting like Happy Holidays, under the pretext of not offending people who don't believe in Jesus. Yet, they don't feel the same about a pagan holiday; they have to mention the name of the holiday all the time while greeting others and they feel everybody must respect or at least be interested in Halloween. That was how that toe-tag ended up in my mailbox. The sender had good friendly intentions of course. But I wonder how he assumed that I, a conservative Muslim, might find a toe-tag invitation to a pagan holiday interesting.
And yesterday morning, while I was rushing from one of my discussion sections for Introduction to Sociology to the next section, one of my colleagues saw me and greeted me with Happy Halloween. I muttered something like "thank you", failing to muster a better reaction and hurried on. Interestingly, some of my students wrote Happy Halloween at the top of their quiz. Although all of them knew me to be a Muslim from Iran, they probably thought it was a good way to welcome their TA in their culture.
I can appreciate such good intentions, but why shouldn't anybody bother to complement a religious person based on his religious beliefs? I think multiculturalism is about accepting and respecting people (including their beliefs) as they are. If you presume somebody would feel the same about your cultural values as you do, that's not multiculturalism; rather, it's melting pot and cultural assimilation. Undergraduate student may not analyze things to such levels. But what about graduate students or professors?
As I've mentioned at the end of my Eid Fetr post, apart from my Muslim friends, the only person who spontaneously greeted me for the Eid was one of our liberal professors who (through her frequent visits to Bangladesh) has good awareness about Muslim concerns. And well, after I put cookies in our grad lounge, one of my class-mates showed up to thank me for the cookies and in the meantime, asked me how should she greet me for the occasion. While I'm continuously showered with homosexuality awareness info, multiculturalists don't seem to be as much obsessed with awareness about religious values.
In this country, respecting one's culture is promoted as far as it has nothing to do with religion. If you go to people's door and call them to Jesus or God, you're pushing your beliefs on them and you could even end up in court for unwarranted soliciting (well, of course I don't enjoy evangelists knocking on my door either). Yet, presuming people would respect something they actually don't, (like trick or treating at their home or greeting them in a way they don't like) is about culture and tradition and it's perfectly OK. But maybe the importance of this holy night is not limited just to ordinary people. It appears that even among the religious folks, it's very important to observe Halloween and trick or treat.
On Thursday night, I had been invited to speak on an interfaith panel in a church in Harrisburg (a small town to our east). I was hesitant about going, as it overlapped one of my classes. Right before the class, I couldn't resist the temptation and talked to the professor and got his permission to go. And I'm glad I did. If I had not gone there, there would had been no representative for Islam in that interfaith dialog panel. Not surprisingly, our audience in that church were quite a few; the rest had something more important to do: trick or treat. And I could feel the disappointment in the words and face of our host (the pastor of that church).
The panel was about religion and culture. We, as international students, were expected to explain about our religion, the impact of the culture of our country on our religion and the influence of religion on daily life. As my participation in the panel was a last-minute decision, I had nothing prepared and I had to quickly jot down some notes on the way to Harrisburg. To explain the importance of Islam as agency of change, I preferred to begin my talk with a description of daily life in its birthplace, instead of my own country.
Arabia was one of the most wicked places of earth before Islam. People's hobbies were about getting drunk, gang-raping, fighting each other, sucking blood from the veins of live animals, and engraving their baby daughters alive. Over the course of centuries, they had turned Kaaba (a house of worship built by Abraham to pray to God) into a temple to venerate the idols they had carved out of stone and wood and to offer those idols tributes. And stratification was rampant in Arabia. And women were not even second gender; they were merely objects to satisfy sexual desires of men. Islam came to abolish all these abominations.
And when early Muslims fled the brutal persecution by infidels in Mecca and established their society in Medina, one of the first things they did, was writing a constitution and bill of rights that above all ensured equality. In Quran, it's clearly stated that people, regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender and wealth, are worthy only for their belief and obedience to God. Basically, the word Islam means submission to the rules of God, instead of following our own whims. Other frequent themes in Quran are the importance of faith and good deeds at the same time, the value of knowledge and thinking about the creation to realize the magnificence of God's job and of course practicing faith in a communal way to reinforce it.
When Islam spread its wings into my country however, it faced a different environment than Arabia. People in Persia already worshiped one God and the culture of the country already revolved around their religion, Zoroastrianism. When Islam entered Persia 14 centuries ago, people of my country simply took progressive elements of Islam and internalized it in their rich culture. Back then, religion and culture were inseparable in Persian life and the same is true nowadays. In Iranian culture, almost all holidays have religious roots one way or another, either in Islam or in ancient Zoroastrianism.
Then, I proceeded to explain about my early childhood exposure to religious diversity in my beloved neighborhood that I used to refer to as little Jerusalem, as described at the beginning of this earlier post on Prayer in America. And as an example of amalgamation of religion and culture in present day Iran, I explained about Ashura and its importance in Iranian culture. And I elaborated on what I've written at the end of my Nowruz 1386 post.
The audience were surprised to hear that even non-Muslim Iranians like Zoroastrians, Armenians and Jews participate and sometimes contribute to it by way of providing nazri meals for Muslim mourners. And I could see the puzzled looks when I said that Jews in Isfahan have their own Hussainia, commemorating and mourning the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. I guess these facts were much in contradiction to the usual nonsense they hear about Iran and Islam in the US media.
All in all, it was an interesting panel, providing an opportunity for all of us to hear about different religions first hand. Dialogs of this kind would be the most efficient way to fight bigotry and prejudice. And well, as a side benefit, I could get out of Carbondale for a few hours (normally, going to Kroger for my grocery shopping, is the farthest I can get away from school for a break). Coming back to Carbondale, I realized that it's been exactly 3 months since I landed in this depressing small town in the middle of nowhere.
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