Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Every Day is NOT Mother's Day

So while perusing through Facebook I saw that one of my friends had posted this.


This is not her original post, of course, but a retweet (or a repost, if you will) of some "Islamic" group that shared/created/plagiarized this image.

Now everyone has the right to an opinion (no matter how deluded) so here's mine on this image (and others of that ilk).

  • This picture claims that every day is Mother's Day in Islam because Islam encourages you to respect, love, obey and honour your mother everyday. My question: so which religion doesn't? Every religion that I know of thinks it's a great idea to respect, love, obey and honour thy parents. So Every Day is Mother's Day in Islam / Judaism / Christianity / Hinduism / Buddhism / Taoism / ...ism.
  • Mother's Day is primarily a North American festival. You don't like it where you live, you don't need to celebrate it. There's nothing in Islam requiring you to believe in Mother's Day, but there's nothing preventing you from celebrating it either.
  • We should treat our mothers every day like it's Mother's Day, but in reality (and practically) it's not doable, so we take out one day to do something really special for our mothers. I don't really believe in cards or flowers, so the whole "commercialization of the day" is really lost on me, but I do something, like taking the whole family to a restaurant or something special.
In reality it's not just about Mother's Day. You see these pseudo-salafis (they are like the right wing Hindu nutjobs in India who go crazy on Valentine's Day) post similar stuff on Father's Day, Thanksgiving Day, Sharia Appreciation Day (ok so I made the last one up). On Christmas they usually post notices about how it is a mortal sin to wish someone Merry Christmas. On New Year they will post statuses on how there is only two Eids in Islam, and so on.

So maybe we need a Just Chill day. Where everyone can agree (that it's a holiday) to Just Chill. Most likely those pseudo-salafis will have a problem with that as well.

5 comments:

Sarita @ it's my girls' world said...

A Just Chill Day is right up my alley. Maybe in March when it's just beginning to thaw :-)

Salma - The Write Balance said...

I agree, a chill day seems pretty great to me!

Raj @Pink Chai said...

I'm all for a chill day! I think everyone should be allowed to celebrate when they want and how they want...live & let live.

Unknown said...

So glad you wrote this post! On a scale of 1-10 for how irritating these things are I would say they are about a ten. let me have my brunch, my flowers, and my adorable handmade cards

mezba said...

Thanks all. Those holier-than-thou posts and memes (often with spelling errors and others) are so irritating.