MY WISH FOR US ALL

Today is the Solstice. It can be proven by measuring the position of the sun and the length of the day. Many folks celebrate the Solstice, not as a superstition thing (If we don't sacrifice a calf the sun won't come back!) Most of the stories about what the "pagans" did were made up by those who wanted to convert them (add to the collection plate, etc). The actual date of the Solstice varies from year to year by a day or 2 - the earth wobbles a bit - and then there are time zones. Plus, this is the summer solstice in the southern hemisphere. Cool, huh? Or warm in Rio. So, whether you celebrate it or not, I hope your Solstice and the new year (sun-wise) is happy and healthy for you.

Next - December 25th….. Happy Birthday to, um, ah………

Many Christians are unaware that the true spirit of reverence which Muslims display towards Jesus and his mother Mary spring from the fountainhead of their faith as prescribed in the Holy Quran. Most do not know that a Muslim does not take the name of Jesus , without saying Eesa alai-hiss-salaam i.e. (Jesus peace be upon him).

Many Christians do not know that in the Holy Qur'an, Jesus is mentioned by name twenty-five times. For example:

.. We gave Jesus the son of Mary Clear (Signs) and strengthened him with the holy spirit. .. Quran 2:87

Behold! the angels said: "O Mary! Allah gives thee glad tidings of a Word from Him: his name will be Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, held in honor in this world and the Hereafter and of (the company of) those nearest to Allah. Quran 3:45

.. Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) an apostle of Allah .. Quran 4:171

And in their footsteps We sent Jesus the son of Mary, confirming the Law that had come before him .. Quran 5:46

And Zakariya and John, and Jesus and Elias: all in the ranks of the righteous: Quran 6:85

The Quranic Titles of Jesus
Though Jesus is mentioned by name in twenty-five places in the Holy Quran he is also addressed with respect as: "Ibne Maryam" - son of Mary; as Masi (Heb) Messiah - translated as Christ; "Abd-ullah" servant of Allah; "Rasul -Ullah" - Messenger of Allah.

He is spoken of as "the word of God", as "the spirit of God", as a "Sign of God", and numerous other epithets of honor spread over fifteen different chapters. The Holy Quran honors this great Messenger of God, and over the past fourteen hundred years Muslims continue to hold Jesus as a symbol of truth.

Christmas and 25th of December
Jesus is commonly considered to have been born on the 25th of December. However, it is common knowledge among Christian scholars that he was not born on this day. It is well known that the first Christian churches held their festival in May, April, or January. Scholars of the first two centuries AD even differ in which year he was born, some believing that he was born fully twenty years before the current accepted date. So how was the 25th of December selected as the birthday of Jesus?

Grolier's encyclopedia says: "Christmas is the feast of the birth of Jesus Christ, celebrated on December 25 ... Despite the beliefs about Christ that the birth stories expressed, the church did not observe a festival for the celebration of the event until the 4th century.... since 274, under the emperor Aurelian, Rome had celebrated the feast of the "Invincible Sun" on December 25. In the Eastern Church, January 6, a day also associated with the winter solstice, was initially preferred. In course of time, however, the West added the Eastern date as the Feast of the Epiphany, and the East added the Western date of Christmas".

So who else celebrated the 25th of December as the birth day of their gods before it was agreed upon as the birth day of Jesus ? Well, there are the people of India who rejoice, decorate their houses with garlands, and give presents to their friends on this day. The people of China also celebrate this day and close their shops. Buddha is believed to have been born on this day. The great savior and god of the Persians, Mithras, is also believed to have been born on the 25th of December long before the coming of Jesus .

The Egyptians celebrated this day as the birth day of their great savior Horus, the Egyptian god of light and the son of the "virgin mother" and "queen of the heavens" Isis. Osiris, god of the dead and the underworld in Egypt, the son of "the holy virgin", again was believed to have been born on the 25th of December.

The Greeks celebrated the 25th of December as the birthday of Hercules, the son of the supreme god of the Greeks, Zeus, through the mortal woman Alcmene Bacchus, the god of wine and revelry among the Romans (known among the Greeks as Dionysus) was also born on this day.

Adonis, revered as a "dying-and-rising god" among the Greeks, miraculously was also born on the 25th of December. His worshipers held him a yearly festival representing his death and resurrection, in midsummer. The ceremonies of his birthday are recorded to have taken place in the same cave in Bethlehem which is claimed to have been the birth place of Jesus .

The Scandinavians celebrated the 25th of December as the birthday of their god Freyr, the son of their supreme god of the heavens, Odin.

The Romans observed this day as the birthday of the god of the sun, Natalis Solis Invicti ("Birthday of Sol the invincible"). There was great rejoicing and all shops were closed. There was illumination and public games. Presents were exchanged, and the slaves were indulged in great liberties. These are the same Romans who would later preside over the council of Nicaea (325 CE) which lead to the official Christian recognition of the "Trinity" as the "true" nature of God, and the "fact" that Jesus was born on the 25th of December too.

In Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon says: "The Roman Christians, ignorant of his (Christ's) birth, fixed the solemn festival to the 25th of December, the Brumalia, or Winter Solstice, when the Pagans annually celebrated the birth of Sol " vol. ii, p. 383.

There are several Christian groups who are opposed to Christmas. For example, they take the verse from the Bible in Jeremiah 10:2-4 as an admonition against decorating Christmas trees. The King James Version reads: "Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen.... For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not."

In order to understand this subject, it is helpful to trace some of the history of Christmas avoidance, particularly its roots in Puritanism. The Puritans believed that the first-century church modeled a Christianity that modern Christians should copy. They attempted to base their faith and practice solely on the New Testament, and their position on Christmas reflected their commitment to practice a pure, scriptural form of Christianity. Puritans argued that God reserved to himself the determination of all proper forms of worship, and that he disapproved of any human innovations - even innovations that celebrated the great events of salvation. The name Christmas also alienated many Puritans. Christmas, after all, meant "the mass of Christ." The mass was despised as a Roman Catholic institution that undermined the Protestant concept of Christ, who offered himself once for all. The Puritans' passionate avoidance of any practice that was associated with papal Rome caused them to overlook the fact that in many countries the name for the day had nothing to do with the Catholic mass, but focused instead on Jesus' birth. The mass did not evolve into the form abhorred by Protestants until long after Christmas was widely observed. The two customs had separate, though interconnected, histories.

As ardent Protestants, Puritans identified the embracing of Christianity by the Roman Emperor Constantine in the early 300s CE as the starting point of the degeneration and corruption of the church. They believed the corruption of the church was brought on by the interweaving of the church with the pagan Roman state. To Puritans, Christmas was impure because it entered the Roman Church sometime in this period. No one knows the exact year or under what circumstances Roman Christians began to celebrate the birth of their Lord, but by the mid-300s CE, the practice was well established.

Islam requires Muslims to respect the faith of others. Regardless of historical facts and theological differences that Christians may have among themselves or theological differences Muslims may have with Christianity we cannot disregard the sentiments of practicing Christians who use this occasion to revere Jesus .

Prophet Muhammad was always very respectful towards the Christians. According to Islamic historians, Ibn e Saad and Ibn e Hisham, once there was a delegation of Byzantine Christians, who were traveling from Yemen to Madinah. The delegation was led by a bishop by the name of Zqyd al-Usquf, who came to discuss a number of issues with Prophet Muhammad. When the time of their prayer came, they asked the Prophet if they could do their worship in the mosque of the Prophet. He answered, "Conduct your service here in the mosque. It is a place dedicated to God."

We should never ridicule the religious beliefs of others, no matter how much we disagree with them. God says in the Quran: "And insult not those whom they worship besides God, lest they insult God wrongfully without knowledge. Thus We have made fair-seeming to each people its own doings; then to their Lord is their return and He shall then inform them of all that they used to do". Quran, 6:108

For whatever you celebrate, I wish you Peace and Love. Isn't that what He tried to teach us? What better way to celebrate than a day of loving each and all.

BREAK FAST

 

A week or so ago, I did a post about Ramazan (Ramadan) and the comments to the blog were few, but I did get a number of emails about the post. http://possumlane.blogspot.com/2010/08/ramadan-ramazan.html.

As most folks who know me at all know that I used to live in Turkey and that I have traveled extensively throughout the Middle East. I have a number of close Turkish friends here on the Shore. There are several restaurants here on the Eastern Shore of Virginia that are owned by Turks. I can think of 8 without straining my brain all that hard…

Anyway, my Turkish friends seem to appreciate my pitiful attempts at speaking their language (which I had not spoken for nearly 50 years, except for a selection of cuss words when needed – that my boss could not understand) and they appreciate my love of their country, food, and understanding and acceptance of their customs. So, I and some friends that I hang out with were invited to a Break Fast at an American Turkish cultural center in Georgetown, Delaware. If you read my post on Ramazan, you will remember that they do not eat or drink during daylight hours, which is a long stretch when Ramazan falls in the summer months. Remember Ramazan is based on the lunar calendar, so it is about 11 days earlier every year. Next year the days will be even longer as Ramazan will start about the 1^st of August. So, last night, our dinner was served at 8 PM, just after sunset.

Most of the women were dressed in their finest headscarves and long sleeved, floor length dresses. Most of the women and children sat on one side of the room, most of the men and visitors on the other. It just seemed to work that way for ease in feeding and caring for the children, not as a segregation thing. Think about your home at Thanksgiving, the men in front of the TV set or hanging out on the porch or gazebo, the women gathered around in the kitchen… I remember G-ma threatening the men with a spatula if they did not get out of her way… the gazebo was the escape from work or just being underfoot.

Our host, Asher, served us.

 

My friend, Mehmet, sat with me. My friends, Beatrice and Grenville, who kindly drove me to the dinner – a wonderful thing since I don’t drive after dark - and sat across from me.

We had a delicious dinner, lentil soup and fresh baked rolls, Turkish meatballs (Köfte – pronounced kind of like Kurftah), pilaf with beef and chickpeas, and a salad, and a sauce to eat with the pilaf. The sauce is a mixture of yogurt, cucumbers, onion and light garlic. All this was followed by fresh made baklava and çay (chai).

It was an emotional experience for me.

If you’ve read much of my blog or if you have known me for a while, you will know I dearly loved the few years I spent in Turkey, I was treated like royalty wherever I went, and I was most fortunate to be able to travel throughout much of the country. That might not look like much on the map, but back in the early 60s, the only paved roads were in the major cities, and there were often no bridges over the shallower rivers, one drove thru them. So travel was slow and yet it gave one a chance to experience the country in a way today’s tourists will miss whizzing by things at 70 mph. Part of my dad’s job was to help set up facilities for building roads and bridges. And being young (I graduated high school in Ankara) I picked up a bit of the language – enough to get in or out of trouble, get something to eat or drink, and find the bathroom! For some reason some of the words have always been part of my thinking vocabulary and just pop out from time to time and I don’t even realize it. I learned to eat eggplant in Turkey, so I learned it as patlican (pot-la-john) and still have to pause and think of the English for it, which in my old age can take some time.

An imam called us to prayer. It has been 46 years since I have heard an actual live voice do the call to prayer. It brought tears to my eyes. I felt very homesick for Turkey. There was prayer both before and after dinner giving thanks for the food and fellowship.

I got to visit with my dear friend, Ülkü, and her daughter I will call Bebek. You might remember them from the post about visiting the Virginia Museum of Marine Science. http://possumlane.blogspot.com/2010/03/missing-in-action-once-again.html

So I want to thank my dear friend, Asher, for inviting me and my friends, Grenville for offering to drive, Beatrice for her company, Mehmet for being my dinner companion, Ülkü and her friends for preparing a wonderful dinner, and the Turkish community for sharing a special occasion with us.

I am still smiling. Çok teşekkür ederim.

RAMADAN, RAMAZAN

 

Ramadan, or Ramazan as I learned it many years ago, started August 11^th this year. It made the news the other night because of some football player who is a Muslim is going to be observing Ramadan, and they are concerned with his ability to play during the fast. Of course… football… we can’t have someone impaired and not entertaining us, can we? But, I must look at the good side and shut that cynical self up… The good side is, it brings up the concept of Ramadan and thus the meaning is there for those who want to learn from it. So, a number of my friends have asked me about it knowing that I have many Muslim friends and Muslim family members.

For many, it is just seen as a time of fasting, from sunrise to sunset. But it is so much more than that. I will include a link to an excellent site for anyone who wants to learn more about Islam – not the fundamentalist jerks, who, like most any other fundamentalist group take holy words and distort them into a license for violence, but the true Islam which is a religion of peace. I know it is not perceived that way in this country anymore, but we often judge an entire people by the actions of a radical few. And another truth is, many of us in the USA see “them” in exactly the same way as they see us – after all, we have troops on the ground in several Muslim countries, we have bombed wedding parties, innocent villagers, farmers in their fields, women, children and babies in their mother’s arms… and we have a reputation for “occupying” countries, keeping a military presence after we are no longer being openly called the enemy.

If you have an open mind and wish to learn more, I suggest you visit http://www.islamicity.com/ramadan/ . It is an excellent site if you wish to be educated about Islam.

The following are excerpts from Islamicity on Ramadan. I have included a few things folks don’t expect to see… things beyond the usual fasting rules and prayer.

Eat, drink and be moderate

Almost all of us do it - once [the sun sets], we just keep plowing food and drink into our mouths till it's hard to move afterwards. And those of us who do it know this is totally contrary to the spirit of Ramadan, through which we're supposed to learn self-control not self-indulgence. Let's try to stick to the Prophetic rule on eating: fill our stomachs with one-third food, one-third water and one-third breathing space, even in Ramadan.

Give a dollar a day in charity...or five or ten

The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, was always generous but even more so in Ramadan. Let's open our hearts and dig a little deeper in our wallets this year. Even less than a dollar a day adds up. Whatever you can give, it's the intention that counts.

Stop swearing and/or backbiting - with a special box

It's hard not to shoot our mouths off when someone's upset us. Whether we utter those four-letter words or backbite about someone to our family and friends, we know this isn't the God-approved way of letting off steam. In Ramadan, when we want to build our spirituality, we've got to [fight] our bad habits.

Try this: get a box [or jar] and every time you catch yourself swearing or backbiting put some money in it. It could be a buck or less. The point is to choose an amount that makes it feel like punishment.

At the end of the month send the money to a charity or buy a gift for the person whom you've backbitten the most against.

Call/email your relatives

You'd think that given the easy access to email, competitive long-distance calling rates, phone cards, etc. these days, we'd keep in touch with family and friends more often. But the opposite seems to be the case, as we get caught up in life's "busyness."

Strengthening ties with family members and keeping in touch with friends is part of our way of life and an act Allah is very pleased with. This Ramadan, call family and friends or at least email them a Ramadan card and ask them how their fasting is going.

Go on a technology diet

Even if you work in the IT industry, you can do this. Avoid checking personal email and surfing the web during your fast. After [the sun sets], instead of plopping yourself in front of the screen, pray. The same goes for the television. The point is to try to give our full attention to spiritual elevation this month.

Forgive everyone who has hurt you

Still got a festering wound from the fight with your friend last year? Still upset about something your spouse said during a heated argument? Or are you still bitter about the way your parents sometimes treated you as a kid? Let go of the anger and pain this Ramadan and forgive those who have hurt you. Forgiving someone is not only good for the body, but it's also great for the soul. And in Ramadan, ten days of which are devoted to Allah's forgiveness, shouldn't we lesser beings forgive too?  

If you find it very difficult to forgive everyone, forgive at least three people.

Q: Why does Ramadan begin on a different day each year?

Because Ramadan is a lunar month, it begins about eleven days earlier each year. Throughout a Muslim's lifetime, Ramadan will fall both during winter months, when the days are short, and summer months, when the days are long and the fast is more difficult. In this way, the difficulty of the fast is evenly distributed between Muslims living in the northern and southern hemispheres.

Q: What do Muslims believe they gain from fasting?

One of the main benefits of Ramadan is an increased compassion for those in need of the necessities of life, a sense of self-purification and reflection and a renewed focus on spirituality. Muslims also appreciate the feeling of togetherness shared by family and friends throughout the month. Perhaps the greatest practical benefit is the yearly lesson in self-restraint and discipline that can carry forward to other aspects of a Muslim's life such as work and education.

Q: Are there any exemptions from fasting?

Some of these exemptions are optional. 

Children under the age of puberty (Young children are encouraged to fast as much as they are able.) 

People who are mentally incapacitated or not responsible for their actions

The elderly

The sick

Travelers who are on journeys of more than about fifty miles

Pregnant women and nursing mothers

Women who are menstruating

Those who are temporarily unable to fast must make up the missed days at another time or feed the poor.

Q: Is fasting just about not eating and drinking during daylight hours?

Despite what many may think Ramadan is just not about restraining from food and drink. Muslims must also refrain from things such as verbal abuse, fighting, eavesdropping, backbiting, lying and slander as these acts render the fast as worthless. In essence Muslims must be model human beings during the fast. The act of abstinence is not meant to starve you; it is an act of worship like prayer. It enables people with plenty to empathize with those who have very little in this world.

To all my Muslim friends and relatives, Have a Happy and Blessed Ramazan. Peace be with you.