Friday, January 13, 2006
Dollar Bottles and Pork Ribs: A Ramadan Special
There is a poster hanging up in my living room that says SPECIAL RAMADAN PARTY at the VIKING CLUB. The upper left and right hand corners of the poster are embossed with the figure of man dressed in Muslim attire dancing with a cigar in his mouth. The text below informs the viewer of the Date, Location, and extent of how much fun is going to be had by those who attend. For example: The music is provided by DJ MOUNE, there is a competition to see who is the most Sexy, a competition to see who is the best couple, a competition to see who is the best dancer. The cover at the door is 3 dollars per couple and 2 dollars if you are single. The text is flanked on the left by the picture of a man and woman dancing together. The right flank is a picture of a sultry woman wearing a bikini. Unfortunately, I missed this “Incredible extravaganza for the Ages”. I have been to the Club before with one of my Muslim friends. He told me it is the best place to listen to music, drink beer and we discovered they had some nice cuts of pork that went well with the beer.
I just recently celebrated the festival of Tabaski, which is a festival where you go to all your Muslim Neighbors houses, and they give you sheep meat and beer/rum/sangria. The actual purpose of the holiday is tied to the story of Abraham and his obedience to God when asked to kill his son. God replaced the son with a sheep and this is the reason we ate sheep. I am not sure how the booze worked its way into the holiday, but it definitely made the dinner conversation more lively. I suppose that this should not be that big of a surprise. I know Catholics who eat Steak on Fridays and waffle on the authority of the Pope; Southern Baptists who believe in evolution and refute a literal translation of the Bible. In regards to myself, I certainly shirk some of the dogmatic doctrines of the Christian Church.
This is not news, but I think it is important to see that this side of Islam exists. Intellectually, I am sure that we all know that Islam, like any religion, has a wide range of followers. Followers of Islam can range from the apathetic Muslim who does it as a sign of respect to his family and tradition to the fanatical Muslim who believes in a literal translation that condones the murder of infidels. When I told people that I was coming to Burkina Faso a country where the majority religion is Islam at nearly 60 percent of the population, I received many warnings to be careful and not let the terrorists get me. The statement that not all Muslims are terrorists is tired, stupid, and so patently obvious - that no serious person, should contemplate something that is reserved for a pre-teens first socially conscious thought. Instead I want to just talk briefly about how religion always exists in a context and the context in which it exists in the Middle East is very different from the way it exists in West Africa which is very different from the way it exists in America. In Burkina Faso there is a long tradition of the Animist religion and it is said that each person is a combination of percentages of their religion and 100 percent Animist. It is the culture and the history that the people share in common. Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism are traditions that came in late and now worn like a sports jacket. You identify with this camp or that camp, you prefer this style of philosophy to the other but in the end it is not what you identify as. This approach makes people extremely religiously tolerant, to the extent that one family can have a Muslim father a Catholic mother and children who worship at the Protestant Church. I really respect the outlook that the Burkinabe have towards religion. I think they look at the world, their situation, and realize that there are so many problems; it doesn’t make sense to create more based on what traditional religious practices are better.
I just recently celebrated the festival of Tabaski, which is a festival where you go to all your Muslim Neighbors houses, and they give you sheep meat and beer/rum/sangria. The actual purpose of the holiday is tied to the story of Abraham and his obedience to God when asked to kill his son. God replaced the son with a sheep and this is the reason we ate sheep. I am not sure how the booze worked its way into the holiday, but it definitely made the dinner conversation more lively. I suppose that this should not be that big of a surprise. I know Catholics who eat Steak on Fridays and waffle on the authority of the Pope; Southern Baptists who believe in evolution and refute a literal translation of the Bible. In regards to myself, I certainly shirk some of the dogmatic doctrines of the Christian Church.
This is not news, but I think it is important to see that this side of Islam exists. Intellectually, I am sure that we all know that Islam, like any religion, has a wide range of followers. Followers of Islam can range from the apathetic Muslim who does it as a sign of respect to his family and tradition to the fanatical Muslim who believes in a literal translation that condones the murder of infidels. When I told people that I was coming to Burkina Faso a country where the majority religion is Islam at nearly 60 percent of the population, I received many warnings to be careful and not let the terrorists get me. The statement that not all Muslims are terrorists is tired, stupid, and so patently obvious - that no serious person, should contemplate something that is reserved for a pre-teens first socially conscious thought. Instead I want to just talk briefly about how religion always exists in a context and the context in which it exists in the Middle East is very different from the way it exists in West Africa which is very different from the way it exists in America. In Burkina Faso there is a long tradition of the Animist religion and it is said that each person is a combination of percentages of their religion and 100 percent Animist. It is the culture and the history that the people share in common. Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism are traditions that came in late and now worn like a sports jacket. You identify with this camp or that camp, you prefer this style of philosophy to the other but in the end it is not what you identify as. This approach makes people extremely religiously tolerant, to the extent that one family can have a Muslim father a Catholic mother and children who worship at the Protestant Church. I really respect the outlook that the Burkinabe have towards religion. I think they look at the world, their situation, and realize that there are so many problems; it doesn’t make sense to create more based on what traditional religious practices are better.
