Basant 2002

R, well-written, but the point you`re trying to make is?
(sorry, i`m thick)

#44 by SirHumanoid on February 20, 2004 3:32pm

Thanks for showig the right way to the Ummah, Sir (whateever!). It was beffiting for the category of Humanoids you belong to.
I prefer to remain Human!

Products of cultures like this writer forget the fact that Basant not only honouring a blasphemer is a festival in which money which could otherwise have been spent on philanthropic works is wasted on kite flying...

MacDonald`s, Coca-Cola and Pizza Hut while doling out rupees to fund such extravagant affairs wouldn`t be caught dead donating that money to such worthwhile causes as the Edhi foundation, the Ansar Burney foundation e.t.c...

Unfortunately, the demise of the Ummah came about when such `cultural` representations such as this Basant festival came into play, and Muslims instead of identifying themselves as part of a universal brotherhood, started identifying themselves with paganistic, non-Islamic rituals and started taking pride in them and shamefully being proud of something which was something to be ashamed of...

Some argue that Heera Mandi is part of the Lahore culture...Should that be something that Lahoris be proud of? Is that something that they shoudl celebrate as a `day of prostitutes` to honor the whores that occupy a section of the city...After all, that too is culture...

Unfortunately, shame has left us...We are proud of what we should be ashamed of and ashamed of what we should be proud of...

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39, 38 (ballu and jang):

``i guess while you folks try to figure out what is halal and what is haram, please recall what made islam spread from mooristan to balistan...They used their reasoning powers to accept or reject what made sense. why change anything now?``

Yarr, we are talking about small things, you are talking about the big picture. We are talking about individuals and their attitudes, you are talking about entire societies. We are talking about local customs, you are talking about mooristan and balistan, Persian steel and Indian math.

You want to be reasonable, then what the heck is so reasonable about a bunch of pakis flying kits with metal wires on the same day...and passionately defending/fighting it? This calls for a heavy dose of sense of the uncommon kind...

SugarBaap

mooristan is now called spain

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#36 by vertex on February 17, 2004 9:21pm PT
#38 by jang on February 18, 2004 8:34am PT
vertex/naqsh debate

Amen to common sense!!

vertex/naqsh debate

i guess while you folks try to figure out what is halal and what is haram, please recall what made islam spread from mooristan to balistan. i kind of feel that the soldiers of peace did not debate if the persian steel, indian math (bania accounting schemes?) or chinese barud was kosher as per the hadith. they used their reasoning powers to accept or reject what made sense. why change anything now?

harimau

originally mardi grass was a festival celebrated in the hills of Garhwal and was about smoking grass (hence the name..nothing to do with fat tuesday).

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Naqsh,

``he who acts like a people is one of them`` that is a paraphrase of a hadith sharif by our aaqa alayhisalatuwasalam.``

Am very, very familiar with it. It`s quite ambiguous when taken as-is, though, and must be interpreted with EXTREME caution. I drive a car...oops. I eat breakfast cereal...oops. I speak English most of the time...double oops! Of course, we both know the spirit of the hadith...and I stick by my guns...any similarity to a religious occasion of another faith is now strictly coincidental - i.e. people are not imitating anyone for the sake of being like them...at least for Basant.

``yes in marriages there are many things which we should get rid off because they ar unislamic the biggest of all being the concept of jahaiz or dowry....``

Amen to that. Or at least ``tokenize`` the gifts... It`s absolutely nuts what some people demand...your remaining points are also quite sound.

Re:ahmadzai#31
Boss, that was a good one :-). You know how we desis are. We love to ape each other, especially in the Indo-Pak context, whether it is nuclear weapons or film music. So why not Basant ? If you see something good next door, no harm in going for it ourselves.

Ref ahmadzai #31

[My concern is why limit to snatching something from Pakistanis only. How about snatching the following as well?

1. Pompolona, Spain`s bulls run
2. Paris to Dakar desert rally
3. Irish Parade in NYC
4. Mardi Grass of New Orleans
5. Chinese new year celebrations
6. Kualalumpur, Malaysia`s Thaipusam, the Hindu religious festival of Batu Caves.
7. Dubai Shopping Festival
8. London, Ontario`s Airshow
9. Brisban`s sports of the pest
10. Maoris` Dance Festival of Newzealand
and many others like the above examples.]

We in Tamil Nadu have ``Jallikkattu`` traditionally celebrated on the day after Sankaranthi (Pongal in Tamil) which itself is a celebration of the harvest and for thanking the gods. So, we already have Thanksgiving and it predates the American Thanksgiving which only started in the 19th century.

Jallikkattu is where money and clothes are tied to the horns of (uncastrated and hence ferocious) bulls and the Maasanamuthus of Tamil Nadu chase the bulls and try to get at the bundle between the horns of the bull. Just to make it a little bit more sporting, we generally sharpen the horns a bit. I believe a couple of guys got gored to death this year and removed themselves from the gene pool. Since this also predates the running of the bulls in Pompolona, Spain I think India has at least claims to being original in this sport.

As to Thaipusam in Malaysia, that is a festival brought to Malaysia by Indians. The asterism Pushya (Pusam in Tamil) in the month of Thai (Jan 15-Feb 14) is a festival day to Lord Muruga (Kartik) and you will find celebrations in many temple towns on that day. In Palani, Lord Muruga has a temple up on a hill and the transplanted Thaipusam in Malaysia imitates the hills of Palani by using the Batu caves near Kuala Lumpur which anyway originally had Buddhist associations rather than Hindu ones.

By the way, for those who belong to the modern-day Ghazni School of Thought, the Palani temple recently had a new idol consecrated. The suggestion was to use 50 kilograms of gold to make the idol but I don`t know how much actually was used. Anyway, something to drool about.

As to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and the custom of throwing bead necklaces from the floats to women who bare their breasts, untill the missionaries showed up in India and started imposing Western ideas of attire, most South Indian women wore only a sari without a blouse. So there is nothing new in that. And in Jay`s Kerala, they didn`t even bother to cover up their chest with the sari. They used a shorter ``mundu`` and went around topless. That ought to have given fits to the mullahs.

Ref Naqshbandi #28

[plats8/vertexI have nothing against celebrating the arrival of spring but why do we have to do it on exactly the same day as the hindus and the same name too? why not call it, for example, Jashn-e-Ibtida-e-Bahar? And give thanks to Allah for the blessing of spring? Nothing wrong with kite flying per se just the association with hinduism which gets my goat.]

If anybody/anything got your goat, it was Ibrahim and Allah who commanded him to kill the goat.

And to think that you have forgotten that fact though the Id was hardly a month ago!

Anyway, go fly a kite.

vertex,

``he who acts like a people is one of them`` that is a paraphrase of a hadith sharif by our aaqa alayhisalatuwasalam.

yes in marriages there are many things which we should get rid off because they ar unislamic the biggest of all being the concept of jahaiz or dowry which is a disgusting hindu custom and prevents many poorer people from marrying off their daughters cos they can`t afford the jahaiz. pure jahaliyyah. secondly the stigma against marrying widows is also something we have adopted from hinduism which we need to get rid of as it is unislamic.
thirdly some of the actual ceremonies where there is fazool kharchi and free-mixing. the rest such as rasm-e-hina etc. are fine.

i`m not saying throw the baby out with the bathwater only that those customs which are not against shariah from any culture can happily be adopted, those which are against it must be removed.

Amit at # 16:

You wrote:
``I think it is time that we Indians step up and take over this Basant thingie from the Pakistanis. Pakistanis have shown us that this Basant phenomena can become a big deal for tourism, commercial activity and, of course, entertainment. However, they are handicapped by all these fundos who are spoilsports, leading to this angst over Basant. We Indians don`t have these hassles. We can take over Basant and magnify it 100 times, all over the country. We could create a real money-spinner, attract tourists from all over the world and build further our national image.``

My 2 bits:

This is absolutely brilliant.

My concern is why limit to snatching something from Pakistanis only. How about snatching the following as well?

1. Pompolona, Spain`s bulls run
2. Paris to Dakar desert rally
3. Irish Parade in NYC
4. Mardi Grass of New Orleans
5. Chinese new year celebrations
6. Kualalumpur, Malaysia`s Thaipusam, the Hindu religious festival of Batu Caves.
7. Dubai Shopping Festival
8. London, Ontario`s Airshow
9. Brisban`s sports of the pest
10. Maoris` Dance Festival of Newzealand
and many others like the above examples.

This will make India the only tourist attraction of the world with unlimited possibilities of earning foreign currency and building its national image.

:-)