ramadanadingdog
Ramadanadingdong
So, it is with some trepidation that me and the Ho took our first tentative steps into the holy month of Ramadan. For those of you not fully versed in the ways and mores of our Islamic brethren, during the month of Ramadan one must abstain from the consumption of pretty much everything during the hours of daylight. This means, no food or drink – not even water; no cigarettes; no sex and no generally doing anything that isn’t in the mode of contemplating the greater good that is Allah or the magnificence that is Muhammad.
I don’t have an issue with any of this. In fact, I am almost jealous of it. Western religion is apologetic when asking its believers to do anything. We would like you to come to church and worship; on Sundays, so as to not interrupt anything important. O, you can’t make that. No problem. It is no longer even a sin to not attend church. This came a massive blow to me when I found out because going to church, or rather, not going to church, but pretending to, is one of the key signifiers of my childhood. And now I discover that all that effort, all that sin – lies – to hide the other sin – not going to church – was in vain. How many steps have I taken toward hell hiding something that is no longer even a sin?
And Christianity has no imagination when it comes to thinking about what it wants its believers to do. Where is its pilgrimages – Lourdes, just doesn’t cut it I’m afraid – where is its fasting, its denial of privileges? Before you say anything, I know what Lent is supposed to be, but I also know what it actually transpires to be. The thing is, with Christianity, of course it can be taken to extremes, but in the main, it isn’t.
I think the reason that this is so is because instead of separating the religious from our other lives, we have fashioned the rest of our lives upon the basic tenants if our religion. Capitalism is borne of Christianity. It is not a new development, the religious elite have always been rich, have always been powerful. But in Jesus - a lowly carpenters son – we have the first exponent of what would become the American Dream. Work hard, take the knocks and then stand back and reap the rewards. This idea of small town boy made good is still eulogised today. Look at the cult of Bill Gates, of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Are these not the latter day saints come to deliver us for ourselves and from the shackles of our ignorance?
By adopting, or reshaping - crafting in our own image - the religious tenants associated with personal rather than societal gain, we have eroded the ceremonies and ritual of our religion to a point where they no longer interfere with our work day or mess up our weekends. We have allowed capitalism to become our sacrament. We may still have individual faith in our god, but faith can only be defined by one person at a time. When thinking about faith it is important to understand the parameters of the question. Do we have faith that god exists? Do we have faith that the texts ascribed to his teachings are true? Do we have faith that Christianity, as a whole, and in its entirety, speaks for us as it moves forward in millennial time? Faith just doesn’t cut it any more. We have gone beyond faith to a point where our (desire for) personal freedoms out weigh the need for communal deliverance. Faith is simply a word now, something we apply to ourselves like a job title or a qualification. Hi, I’m Tim: Personal Trainer and Christian. Hi, I’m Heidi: Stay-at-home-mum and regular Church-Goer. It is the media that has done it, but the media merely reflects what society has done to itself and then accelerates the process like petrol bomb. In a mediocre world, we use labels to define the individual we all strive to be. But there are only so many labels available. In the west, we don’t have the imagination to be truly inventive in defining ourselves. We are too bound by the labels that society will allow us. And those label are printed by the fact that our culture is based on a religion so inept at answering anything with a straight answer; is so grey when what we need is black and whites; is so vague in its descriptions of anything that it absolutely no problem at all to accommodate it into our really, very busy schedules.
Christianity sucks man, but I can’t even be bothered to get worked up about it any more. It is just irrelevant. Except of course that it isn’t, that the worlds most powerful man talks about the war on terror in terms used to describe the battles in star wars: the axis of evil, the arc (or should that be Ark?) of moderate influences. We are reaching the point where the final war looks likely rather than possible. Christianity is the natural resting place of the mediocre, Islam is not. Western society is determined to be the most mediocre there has every been. Middle class, middle educated and middle income. The west is not filled with geniuses and the influential. It is led by them; we follow those that we deem to be greater than ourselves. We follow those that we have gifted power in due democratic process. Democracy elevates the individual in incremental steps so small that the shift is never questioned. And yet one day, the man on the street can be George Bush. And this is seen as progress, as something we should encourage all over the world; should be forced on peoples all over the world.
Whatever.
The above actually was not the rant that I intended when sitting down to write this. The rant that I planned was about Ramadan and the fact that it is used to foster the aspirations of an entire region. Aspirations that can be measured using only the numbers zero and a little. If go here: http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php you, like me can waste as many hours as you deem sufficient just look at interesting stats. For example, did you know that the Belgians suffer the greatest tax burden - at nearly 56%? Or that Kuwait has 39,902,530.317 barrels per 1000 people in oil reserves whilst south Africa has only 177.425. The problem with this sitye is that I have now given up on this blog and am compiling a piece of work based on stats about Bahrain….
I might, one day, get this blog about living with Ramadan finished……
See you later.
XxX
So, it is with some trepidation that me and the Ho took our first tentative steps into the holy month of Ramadan. For those of you not fully versed in the ways and mores of our Islamic brethren, during the month of Ramadan one must abstain from the consumption of pretty much everything during the hours of daylight. This means, no food or drink – not even water; no cigarettes; no sex and no generally doing anything that isn’t in the mode of contemplating the greater good that is Allah or the magnificence that is Muhammad.
I don’t have an issue with any of this. In fact, I am almost jealous of it. Western religion is apologetic when asking its believers to do anything. We would like you to come to church and worship; on Sundays, so as to not interrupt anything important. O, you can’t make that. No problem. It is no longer even a sin to not attend church. This came a massive blow to me when I found out because going to church, or rather, not going to church, but pretending to, is one of the key signifiers of my childhood. And now I discover that all that effort, all that sin – lies – to hide the other sin – not going to church – was in vain. How many steps have I taken toward hell hiding something that is no longer even a sin?
And Christianity has no imagination when it comes to thinking about what it wants its believers to do. Where is its pilgrimages – Lourdes, just doesn’t cut it I’m afraid – where is its fasting, its denial of privileges? Before you say anything, I know what Lent is supposed to be, but I also know what it actually transpires to be. The thing is, with Christianity, of course it can be taken to extremes, but in the main, it isn’t.
I think the reason that this is so is because instead of separating the religious from our other lives, we have fashioned the rest of our lives upon the basic tenants if our religion. Capitalism is borne of Christianity. It is not a new development, the religious elite have always been rich, have always been powerful. But in Jesus - a lowly carpenters son – we have the first exponent of what would become the American Dream. Work hard, take the knocks and then stand back and reap the rewards. This idea of small town boy made good is still eulogised today. Look at the cult of Bill Gates, of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Are these not the latter day saints come to deliver us for ourselves and from the shackles of our ignorance?
By adopting, or reshaping - crafting in our own image - the religious tenants associated with personal rather than societal gain, we have eroded the ceremonies and ritual of our religion to a point where they no longer interfere with our work day or mess up our weekends. We have allowed capitalism to become our sacrament. We may still have individual faith in our god, but faith can only be defined by one person at a time. When thinking about faith it is important to understand the parameters of the question. Do we have faith that god exists? Do we have faith that the texts ascribed to his teachings are true? Do we have faith that Christianity, as a whole, and in its entirety, speaks for us as it moves forward in millennial time? Faith just doesn’t cut it any more. We have gone beyond faith to a point where our (desire for) personal freedoms out weigh the need for communal deliverance. Faith is simply a word now, something we apply to ourselves like a job title or a qualification. Hi, I’m Tim: Personal Trainer and Christian. Hi, I’m Heidi: Stay-at-home-mum and regular Church-Goer. It is the media that has done it, but the media merely reflects what society has done to itself and then accelerates the process like petrol bomb. In a mediocre world, we use labels to define the individual we all strive to be. But there are only so many labels available. In the west, we don’t have the imagination to be truly inventive in defining ourselves. We are too bound by the labels that society will allow us. And those label are printed by the fact that our culture is based on a religion so inept at answering anything with a straight answer; is so grey when what we need is black and whites; is so vague in its descriptions of anything that it absolutely no problem at all to accommodate it into our really, very busy schedules.
Christianity sucks man, but I can’t even be bothered to get worked up about it any more. It is just irrelevant. Except of course that it isn’t, that the worlds most powerful man talks about the war on terror in terms used to describe the battles in star wars: the axis of evil, the arc (or should that be Ark?) of moderate influences. We are reaching the point where the final war looks likely rather than possible. Christianity is the natural resting place of the mediocre, Islam is not. Western society is determined to be the most mediocre there has every been. Middle class, middle educated and middle income. The west is not filled with geniuses and the influential. It is led by them; we follow those that we deem to be greater than ourselves. We follow those that we have gifted power in due democratic process. Democracy elevates the individual in incremental steps so small that the shift is never questioned. And yet one day, the man on the street can be George Bush. And this is seen as progress, as something we should encourage all over the world; should be forced on peoples all over the world.
Whatever.
The above actually was not the rant that I intended when sitting down to write this. The rant that I planned was about Ramadan and the fact that it is used to foster the aspirations of an entire region. Aspirations that can be measured using only the numbers zero and a little. If go here: http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php you, like me can waste as many hours as you deem sufficient just look at interesting stats. For example, did you know that the Belgians suffer the greatest tax burden - at nearly 56%? Or that Kuwait has 39,902,530.317 barrels per 1000 people in oil reserves whilst south Africa has only 177.425. The problem with this sitye is that I have now given up on this blog and am compiling a piece of work based on stats about Bahrain….
I might, one day, get this blog about living with Ramadan finished……
See you later.
XxX
posted by Tim Heidi Arthur Kofi X at 8:11 am
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