Born and raised Catholic and I can attest to that – we love our gaudy saint figurines. Are they the kind the big gaudy plastic ones, that glow in the dark? (Yes, it’s not just for Nativity sets, kiddies!)
My mother has like, two, but they’re just your generic small stone ones. You can’t really see them among all the plants.
Now, you actually might have a chance to learn something about Islam.
I grew up Catholic, too, but we didn’t get into the statue collecting business. My neighbor’s are stone, most about 3 ft, and all with lighting on them (fortunately pretty low level lighting). I don’t care what he does as long as I don’t have to stare at them every time I’m enjoying my own backyard. Like I said, we fortunately have some mature landscaping for privacy.
I’ve had Muslim neighbors since I was 3. There’s nothing exotic about it. Just treat them like you would any other neighbor, with respect and fellowship, and like any other neighbor, hopefully they’ll treat you the same in return.
I don’t plan on making any special plans to interact with them more than any other neighbors. I’m not exactly the most social person, and our neighborhood seems to have settled into that basic “say hi and chat for a bit if we see each other” routine. And I would never dream of asking a stranger about their culture unless it naturally came up.
Heck, if I were more social, I could have just went out and asked “So what’s the occasion?” and introduced myself. But that didn’t even occur to me. I just googled to find out if anyone had a holiday going on. And even then I didn’t find anything. It was only at like 1:00 AM when I was just surfing the net before bed that I noticed someone wishing people “Eid Mubarak” and looked up what holiday they might be referring to.
I still don’t even know if they’re really Muslim. It’s just a hypothesis. They could just have leftover Fourth-of-July fireworks and are able to set them off now that they live outside the city limits. It could be totally random. Maybe they had a Muslim friend come over, and they wanted to be nice to him. I don’t know anything.
Given how often I’ve interacted with my neighbors more recently, I may never know.
actually my Arabian neighbors son owns the retro video game store in the area and I buy all my tweaked x boxes from him … cool guy but does drive a bit too fast down the cul de sac …
Ah, I was wondering why there were some fireworks going off outside my apartment building about an hour or so ago. Makes sense now, thanks.
My last supervisor at the Bangkok Post was a Muslim. She wasn’t Thai but rather an ethnic Malay from Singapore with British citizenship through her husband. Not devout at all though. She had lived in England for decades including a long stint at the Financial Times. Very liberal, she did drink, and of her two grown children, she lamented her son being an arch conservative.
Sometimes. Not this year, not around here. Or maybe I slept through it.
(Is it asking too much to bring back the Ramadan cannon?)
Drinking alcohol is no indication as to being “liberal”. Many of the 9/11 hijackers drank alcohol.
:rolleyes:
Yeah. In Pakistan if I think fireworks on a holiday it’s either New Years or Independence Day.. So nice to be told what your culture is by an outsider.
We do not ‘party’ for Eid El Adha… from the Maghrebine perspective. The day is consumed by the sheep dressing and the gifts.
It is isn’t general at all. I can assure you from an African perspective the idea is completely bizarre. The idea someone would state flatly ‘muslims do it’ is equally bizarre.
What Dubai does is … purely the marketing and the gaudiness.
Never ever take anything in Dubai as an example of a standing Muslim practice, it is almost always the pure marketing inventions of Dubai (often by the expatatriats who run all the marketing).
This is some kind of Indonesian thing perhaps then as the idea is bizarre to me.
it is a stupid idiotic hypothesis.
And never out in the West. The idea itself is bizarre to me.
– we use in the west the siren, never a cannon for the Eid El Fitr.
Indeed it is either a national independence day or the international (1 january) new year or something like that.
not ever have I seen a fireworks for Eid El Fitr or Eid El Edha.
Actually, given the information available to BigT, I think it was a reasonable hypothesis.
No it was not. It is not a general muslim thing to set off the fireworks for Eid El Edha and it is a bizarre idea to make the association.
But Eid El Edha fireworks makes at least as much sense as any other reason for fireworks. While not a “general Muslim thing” it is something that some Muslims apparently do.
You know, now that you mention it … while fireworks are popular in Indonesia and I don’t think twice about hearing/seeing them at any holiday time, on reflection they aren’t a regular feature of Idul Adha. They are hugely popular at Idul Fitri, though.
Dubai is no good reason for someone to conclude ‘muslims do fireworks for eid el adha’
That makes some sense for Eid el fitr although it is not done in my world.
Ramira, have a look at abductive reasoning.
I am sorry that you are so hostile, for it stands in the way of learning.
They could just as easily have been celebrating Vietnamese Independence Day.