Changing a sincerely held belief about Halloween

This article is great in making one of my main points: how a majority of Muslims are forgetting not only their roots but integrating to the point that a couple generations down the road, nobody from their progeny would know who followed Islam in their forefathers or even what Islam is/was.

Take this example of a parent who, after a lot of questioning (& prodding) by kids finally gave in & let the kids enjoy Halloween. Mosques & Islamic centers in North America are coming out with "Halal-oween" to let the kids enjoy Halloween in an Islamic setting. Frankly, I don't even know how one would explain the concept of Halloween in an "halal" setting.

Now, the festivities of Halloween are borne out of a pagan ritual. It's nothing to do with Christianity. There is one another major ritual in Christian world, which is catching on around the world, which also has its roots in pagan rituals: Christmas. Because, as science has already proven it, that Prophet Jesus was born in spring/summer months & not in winter, & certainly, not on Dec 25th.

Anyway, so my concern is with making Halloween as "halal" is that next thing on the agenda would be making Christmas "halal". I mean why can't there be "halal" Christmas? After all, Muslims consider Jesus as a Prophet of God & respect him very much. Muslims consider Jesus as the son of Mary. So, what would stop an Islamic center to label Christmas as "halal"?

Next thing would be "halal" Valentine's Day (Muslim kids can send love messages to their parents or spouses to each other & siblings to each other etc.).

Problem with allowing one's own Muslim children to go out trick-or-treating or Islamic centers hosting "Halal-oween" is that it's a very slippery slope. It won't stop at only Halloween & will start snowballing into other Christian festivities becoming "Halal".

One or two generations down the road kids of today will be parents or even grandparents themselves, & they would be like, "well, I celebrated Halloween, Christmas & other Christian festivals. So no harm in doing it." Their kids will be celebrating it, too. However, those kids won't know the difference between Islamic "Halal-oween" & Christian "Halloween."

Now, it won't merely stop there, but young Muslim parents are also naming their kids with biblical names, e.g. Adam & Sophia. Now, Adam is considered a Prophet in Islam. There are several Prophets or religious men in the New Testament who are also considered Prophets in the Quran & as such respected by Muslims. So, in a few years, we will see Muslim parents naming their kids Jacob, Joseph, John, Mary, Zachary etc.

Now, if we couple the biblical names with celebrating Christian festivals, you may get an idea what will happen. But, if not, let me paint the picture for you:

So, by the mid-to-late 21st century, it might be common that a Muslim Jacob will propose to her Christian girlfriend, saying that "we celebrate the same holidays & I don't even know what Islam is, & hence, I don't even follow it, & you don't even need to convert to Islam. So why don't we get married?" Or a Muslim Mary will propose to her Christian boyfriend, saying the same as above. Their kids will of course wouldn't know the difference between any religion, since their parents are celebrating all holidays as same, & their names are all the same as biblical / Christian names.

Lo and behold, Islam is gone from that generation & Christianity has taken a firm hold on that generation.
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http://www.thestar.com/life/2015/10/25/changing-a-sincerely-held-belief-about-halloween-jalaluddin.html

The first (and last) time I went trick-or-treating, I was 5 years old. The week leading up to Halloween, I watched my best friend Alana’s mother turn yards of pink tulle & glitter into a Glinda the Good Witch dress. There was a sparkly silver wand & she was even allowed to wear frosted pink lipstick.

My mother had no intention of letting me trick or treat. She thought begging candy from strangers was odd. Worse — it seemed ill-mannered, & for my Hyderabadi mother, there is nothing worse than being rude. So she told me Muslims don’t celebrate Halloween, & left it at that.

But mom had a soft spot for my best friend’s mother, who had gifted her with a killer walnut brownie recipe. So on Halloween, when Alana showed up resplendent in her Glinda the Good Witch outfit (& frosty pink lipstick), I begged my mom to let me go.

There was just one problem. I didn’t have an outfit. The two moms cast about & settled on a classic solution.

For my first & only Halloween, I dressed up as a floral-bed-sheet ghost, with hastily cut-out eye holes. Underneath my ugly costume, I was grinning.

Flash forward several decades. My eldest son is 4. On Halloween he goes to school dressed in jeans & a sweatshirt. He tells me about the costume parade afterwards — a popular tradition where the younger grades show off their outfits to the older kids.

“How come I didn’t dress up?” he asked.

“Muslims don’t celebrate Halloween,” I tell him.

Then I pause. That answer is reflexive. But is it even really true?

“It’s not part of our family tradition,” I try again. My son looks a bit confused. “We can buy some chocolate tomorrow if you want,” I say, a little desperately. “It all goes on sale Nov. 1 anyway.”

The following Halloween, the same thing happens. My sons have questions & I don’t have any great answers.

Because here’s the thing: my kids love to dress up.

By the time he was 6 years old, my older son had not one, but 3 Batman costumes. He also had a doctor’s coat, a Viking helmet & various foam swords & shields. My mother sewed them both Harry Potter cloaks with iron-on Gryffindor badges when they went through their Hogwarts phase. My younger son has a Luke Skywalker costume, to match his older brother’s Darth Maul get-up.

So is Halloween really such a big deal for us?

The Supreme Court of Canada says that a religious belief is one that is sincerely held. Many religious & secular traditions avoid Halloween for lots of reasons.

But I didn’t know how I felt about it anymore.

I asked my husband what he thought about trick or treating.

“Why start now?” he argued. “They’ve stayed away all these years. Playing dress up & knocking on people’s doors are two different things.”

“Didn’t you go trick or treating until you were 12?”

“Fourteen. That’s not the point.”

I polled my friends. Some let their kids dress up for school, but skipped the evening candy collection. Some kept their kids home from school. Still others took their kids to events at the mosque dubbed “Halal-oween.” The mosque version includes dinner, loot bags & games. Some mosques hold a movie night.

Last year, my kids came right out & asked if they could go trick or treating. I decided to go with my gut.

“OK. Let’s see what all the fuss is about.”

We walked around the neighbourhood after dinner. It was drizzling slightly, & cold. The kids were dressed up, but you could barely tell under their jackets. They rang the doorbells of brightly lit houses while I hung back, ready to tell them to run if a weirdo opened the door.

No weirdos, mostly just smiling grandparents. It was quiet, & a little bit dull.

They want to go again this year. My younger son has a new Storm Trooper costume & my older son wants to be Darth Vader. We might even check out the mosque Halal-oween party afterwards, to further develop our community participation (& candy collection).

World War Z quote

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So true. That's the same problem people have, for instance, with understanding the problem of climate change or cloning or economics or finance or any number of problems, on a micro or macro level. Regardless of how much an expert tells them that it will become a problem later on, people will hold on to their beliefs until that given event has happened. Watching it by their own eyes is the only way for them to believe. BUT, by that point, it's already too late for those people to save themselves from whatever that problem or calamitous event it is.

It's the same problem Quran mentions multiple times. Several prophets came & told the same thing to their people, but until & unless, God's punishment came down upon them, the public didn't believe those prophets. And by that time, it was already too late for any repentance. Be it Noah's people or Lot's, Shelah's (Saleh's) or Eber's (Hud's), they all didn't believe their prophets until God's punishment came down upon them.

Muslims obligated to speak out against evil

I had a fiery discussion with a family member (let's call this person, Person X) about this raid & specifically, that young MQM worker who died in the raid. Person X was saddened by the death of that young worker.
 
My point essentially was, "Karma's a bitch." What did I mean by that?
 
That young worker, Syed Waqas Ali Shah, was an active member of MQM. Although, he never killed anyone himself (as per news reports), he was involved with an org'n that is considered criminal in Pakistan by the general public of Karachi.
 
1. Person X: we don't know what that young worker did good or bad things, so I should not say such things against him. We should only talk about good things about other people & not what bad things they have done.
 
My answer: You, as a Muslim, must've heard this a million times, "amr bil maaroof wa nahi anil munkar" (essential meaning: tell people to do good & stop them from doing bad / evil).
 
All Muslims are held responsible for this deed.
 
However, in our modern neo-liberal, neo-Islam, Muslims have forgotten the later part of that statement & only remember the first part.
 
How can you stop someone from doing bad when you don't want to even talk about bad things? Good & Bad are relative to each other. You cannot know what's good until you know what's bad.
 
In our secular, non-religious world, when we do something bad (i.e. illegal), we are punished through the judicial system. Using the logic stated above, isn't that the wrong approach? There shouldn't be any punishment for any kind. Teacher shouldn't punish kids for not doing homework. Parents shouldn't punish kids for doing something bad. Similarly, state shouldn't punish wrongdoers & law breakers. After all, all those people who are getting punished have some good in them. Even Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Qaddafi & several other kings & dictators, past & present, have done some good while in power (provided food, medical, shelter, clothes etc to their public).
 
In our religious world, God / Allah has told us what good to do to receive rewards & what bad things will get you punished. We all know that. Now, people have forgotten that we, all of us Muslims, are held responsible to remind people what's good & what's bad & stopping them from doing it because we are afraid from offending anyone.
 
There is another passage in Surah Al-Araf, which describes the punishment from Allah for a Jewish colony when they broke the law of no working on Sabbath. 2 out of 3 groups were punished, because one group started to actively disobey Allah by continuing to conduct business on Sabbath. Another group actively tried to stop them from doing so. But there was a 3rd group which thought, like a large section of society does now, that it's none of my business to interfere with these people who are conducting business on Sabbath. Who am I to stop them. That 3rd group still thought it was wrong to conduct business on Sabbath & did not practice such themselves.
 
But when the punishment came, both those who were actively conducting business (first group) & those who, although, thinking it should not be done, didn't actively stop the first group (third group), were severely punished (turned into monkeys). Only the group which did "stuck their noses" in others' business by actively trying to stop the first group from conducting business were spared.
 
All Prophets & Messengers who came in this world (most notably, Jesus, Moses, Aaron, Abraham, & of course, Muhammad) did not just tell people what is good & what good things they will receive if they do those good things, but they also actively stopped people from doing bad. They stood up against the kings & dictators of their respective times. All these Prophets & Messengers were made fun of, were bullied, were tortured, were imprisoned, were poisoned, & ultimately killed, for stopping people from bad.
 
And the funny thing is, they were standing up to people who were, after all, had some good in them. Pharoah, Roman emperors, King Nimrud, & even Prophet Muhammad's own tribe of Quraish, used to provide food, medical, shelter, clothes, give charity etc to their public.
 
Similarly, several prominent scholars of Islam have been tortured, imprisoned, & ultimately killed, only because they didn't confine themselves to spreading good in the public but also actively stopped people in their communities from bad / evil.
 
So, were the Prophets wrong to stand up to these kings & tyrants? Were they stupid or morons to stop people from doing bad? Were the scholars wrong to stop people from doing bad by constantly harping about it? Didn't these scholars know that they could have a very prosperous & better life by just following the herd & keep telling people how good they are?
 
Our world has gotten to this point because we all, Muslims & non-Muslims, are silent now. We only want to say good things about others. We don't want to stop anyone from doing something bad / evil. We don't want to label anyone as bad. I guess Allah gave us the wrong responsibility of telling people to do good & stopping them from doing bad.
 
It's fruitless to keep hoping for peace, justice & good in this world when everyone of us is silent & want to stay indifferent. Parents don't care what their kids are doing & households don't care what their neighbours are doing. If we don't want to bring change in our own societies by actively working against bad / evil, then we are part of the problem, & not the solution.

2. Person X: only bad person in MQM is their leader.
 
My answer: If we all consider only the leader of an org'n as the only rotten apple in the whole org'n, then it is very wrong to blame any of the soldiers around the world for whatever bad things they do to the general public; be they be the Israeli soldiers bombing in Gaza, Indian soldiers occupying Kashmir, NATO soldiers in Afghanistan & Iraq, American soldiers in Vietnam war, UN soldiers in Bosnia & Kosovo etc. Because, if they or even the military contractors (e.g. Blackwater) do something wrong in these territories, then soldiers & contractors should be off the hook for any & all wrongdoing. Human rights should not cry foul.
 
That young worker was an active member of the org'n. Even if he never killed anyone by his own hands, he was supporting an org'n which has killed (proven & alleged) several young innocent males in Karachi, who were also sole breadwinners of their poor families.
 
Sahih Hadith is that if you support someone who is persecuting or doing something bad to someone else (basically, a criminal), then you yourself are also the "persecuter" or as much a criminal as that criminal.
 
There's another one that if you see something wrong, then you should stop other people from it, speak out against it (in whichever way you can), & at the very least, think of it as bad in your heart.
 
It doesn't matter if you are an active or passive member of the org'n, but if the org'n (e.g. a Mafia, or criminal gang) is criminally hurting someone else (perhaps, an innocent) or involved in other criminal activities (e.g. money laundering, prostitution, drug smuggling, weapons smuggling etc.), then, by association to that group, you will be held responsible for that group's actions, too.
 
So, regardless of how this young worker got into MQM & how much was he involved in it, or how much he wanted to get out of this org'n, he was ultimately supporting a criminal org'n. And, all courts in the world would have held him criminally responsible by being a party worker & "associating with bad elements". Heck, in the West (where the courts are considered fairer than the rest of the world) would have charged him with obstructing justice (he was protesting against the police raid).

http://tribune.com.pk/story/851291/rangers-conduct-siege-and-search-operation-at-mqm-headquarters-in-karachi/