What are you waiting for? Shoot them! Make America Great Again!
this is a joke, please don’t do that…
I had some of those. Spontaneously combusted.
I’m assuming their names are Arabic? You can usually tell by the given name whether Arab speakers are Muslim or not. And just as with Christians, there are greatly varying degrees of religious practice among Muslims–some are more devout than others. That became very clear to me from working in refugee resettlement for four years, with Iraqis, Somalis, Syrians and Afghans.
Exactly.
Muslims come from so many different backgrounds and countries (including the U.S.) that saying, “I may have Muslim neighbors,” doesn’t really mean that much in terms of cultural characteristics. There isn’t “Muslim cuisine,” (other than being Halal), that smells any particular way. There is, however, for example, Iraqi cuisine, and what the Chaldeans and the Mulsims cook can be very much the same.
Just as with Christians, the country someone comes from will shape cultural practices more. For example, you can tell which country a Muslim woman comes from by her hijab, but that has nothing to do with religion–it’s about fashion.
Glad you caught what I meant. For some reason, I was in a coy mood, and wanted to use understatement.
I’m hoping it works out better than my one black friend in junior high, who was basically driven away due to how his white mom and black dad were treated. (Hence why I call him my junior high friend, not high school.)
(Note, he did not live in my neighborhood. He lived in town.)
And some barbecue.
Do they own a skateboard?
I don’t think I ever met nayone who was Muslum until I was nearly thirty. I was at a school for baking that got quite a number of international students. One student was from Egypt, and one from Pakistan, and both were Muslim.
The Egyptian guy prayed each afternoon, just about the time lab classes were over and we had to clean up. Don’t think we didn’t notice that. He was also very standoffish, and I don’t know that I ever spoke to him.
The Pakistani guy was cool. He was definitely observant, but didn’t use it to get out of things, like the Egyptian. He even hung out with us at parties, but he was careful about what he ate, and only drank soda, tea, or water, no booze.
Thelmalou…we really like this kid. He is very sweet to ‘the lil’wrekker’…he is very Americanized…not so much,his family…and they have a big family…he is always telling us about their gatherings.He sort checked-out during Ramadan…we saw very little of him…i think because we gather around food at our house…and I think he didn’t want to break his fast…i explained to him it was okay if he didn’t eat…or to come at other times.His family is not happy about seeing the ‘lil’wrekker’…as she is a quite normal 18 yr.old…blond. blueeyed…and barely dressed in the hot months…so there you have the whole story…
He was just using his religion as an excuse not to help clean up.
Oh, fortunately they’re not proselytizers or anything. Nice enough people. It’s more the tackiness of so many figurines scattered about that I was alluding to.
I worked for many years in Silicon Valley, so I interacted daily with folks from every race, color and creed. Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, you name it. And plenty of Godless atheist like me, too. 
Hey, slow down, buddy.
Oh FFS. You do know that followers of Islam come from Pakistan, Bosnia, Indonesia, China, Egypt, and practically every other country in the world, right? There is no more a “Muslim” cuisine than there is a “Christian” one. Did you have a particular country in mind that would make BigT “lucky”? Because if he had neighbors from, say, America, he might also get “lucky” and they’d know how to make a decent clam chowder or first-rate cornbread.
[QUOTE=BigT]
Muslims often celebrate the end with fireworks.
[/QUOTE]
And as Ramira notes, there is nothing especially Muslim about fireworks, either. Granted, they are quite popular here in Muslim-majority Indonesia, where they are used as part of any holiday celebration, whether it is a religious celebration such as Idul Fitri (the way “Eid Al Fitr,” which is also just a transliteration from Arabic, is transliterated from Arabic in the national language), the conspicuously non-Islamic holiday known in English as “Christmas,” or the entirely secular celebration of the New Year.
I might add that fireworks to celebrate various holidays are (or at least were when we lived there in the 1980s) also popular in Micronesia, perhaps one of the few regions in the world where there are few to no Muslims in the locally born population. Honestly, I think using fireworks to celebrate holidays may be more closely correlated with tropical and/or developing countries than anything else, although that is just my personal observation.
[QUOTE=elbows]
Also part of Eid is providing for the less fortunate. Where I live the local mosque ALWAYS makes a HUGE donation to the local food bank!
[/QUOTE]
There is no such holiday as “Eid” any more than there is a holiday in the US called “Day” (as in, Memorial Day or Labor Day). It just means holiday or feast in Arabic, and there are more than one.
BigT, if your neighbors are indeed Muslim, I hope you will treat them as ordinary humans/neighbors, not as some exotic zoo specimen. Speaking as an exotic zoo specimen myself (as a white American who has spent almost 17 of the last 23 years in Indonesia), it gets tiring after a while. It’s not their job - or at least it shouldn’t have to be, though it is heartwarming and kind of them if they choose to take it on - to educate you about “the other.”
For fuck’s sake yourself. Trust me that I’m well aware that Muslims come from all over. I was not referring to “Muslim cuisine” whatever the fuck that would be but to the cuisine of whatever ethnic group they come from. (You’ll note that I never mentioned any particular cuisine.) I assumed that their cuisine might be different than the OP is used to. And even if they were American and could make really good cornbread or clam chowder, that would be worth trying. (Although my understanding is that for most Muslims, clams are not halal, so I kind of doubt they’re going to make that.) Fuck that shit.
Oh, I get that you “never mentioned any particular cuisine.” My point is that I disagree with your seeming point that the mere fact they are Islamic automatically makes them of culinary interest, if the OP is “lucky.” There is no reason that their religion makes them more or less likely to be good cooks or have a tasty or terrible food heritage.
But perhaps we are in more agreement than it seems. I absolutely agree with your sentence that I’ve bolded above. As long as you view all new neighbors through the same lens - as potential purveyors of tasty edibles - I have no objection. Hell, that’s how I look at just about everything novel I encounter, whether it is a person, plant, or city.
I’ll take that as an apology.
Ehhhhh… ever been in the Netherlands in New Year…? For quite a few hours around midnight of January 1st the Dutch population in general manages to create a rather passable imitation of an Afghan war zone… They also have a charming tradition called “carbidschieten”, basically transforming milk churns and metal trash cans into cannons, capable of hurling their respective metal lids really far, really fast…
Or Valencia in Spain, during the whole week leading to the “Fallas” festival on St. Joseph’s day… You will be woken like clockwork at 7am with a cheerful serenade of violent explosions that will continue for the rest of the day. And then, on the last day, at night, the whole city burns a bunch of papier-mâché effigies in humongous bonfires with accompaniment of insane fireworks in insane amounts.
These two are examples that I know personally and first-hand. I am sure that there will be many other cases of crazy popular celebrations involving a shit-ton of fireworks in countries that would not be called either “tropical” or “developing”…
Or England on Guy Fawkes Night or the USA on Independence Day. Neither country is “tropical” or “developing” and both occasions are celebrated with many fireworks displays.
Good to know, thanks for the info. (For all I know, maybe the US is one of the few countries that doesn’t use fireworks at any opportunity.)
If you took it as “an attempt to find common ground rather than argue,” you’d be about right.