name: Yuram Abdullah Weiler

‘Tis the Season

09 December, 2008

“Happy, happy Thanksgiving.  May each of you return to work 5 lbs. (2.4 kg.) heavier on Monday,” an anonymous American manager wrote to employees on the day before the holiday.  Contrast the words of this present-day manager to the words of Imam Ali (A.S.) who once said,  “I want to eat the kind of food which the poorest of this realm can afford…I want to live, feel and suffer like them.”[i]

 

Americans are more concerned with their waist lines than with the “waste line” of garbage trucks required to remove the byproducts of their profligate consumer lifestyles.  If parked end-to-end, this cordon of trucks would encircle the earth six times, a fact bringing America’s consumptive habits sharply into focus.  An American consumes more than 30 times as much as the average citizen of India,[ii] where the most recent flare-up of U.S.-induced violence claimed 171 victims in Mumbai.

 

“’Tis the Season to be Jolly,” as the popular Christmas carol begins, and to engage in mass consumption.  The hallmark of America’s addiction to materialism, the holiday season is replete with copious spending for extravagant gifts, gorging on sumptuous holiday foods and merrymaking with the requisite imbibing of alcoholic beverages. 

 

Originally set aside for giving thanks for the bountiful blessings Allah bestowed upon America, Thanksgiving Day has become an annual feast-bordering-on-gluttony ritual, as indicated by the manager’s message cited above.  The day marks the official beginning of the annual American holiday season, which continues through Christmas Day and concludes with the obligatory New Year’s Eve celebrations on 31 December. 

 

And this annual orgy of ingestion takes center stage against a backdrop of hunger and poverty, where 18,000 of the World’s children starve to death on any given day.[iii]  Drowning in a sea of material abundance, Americans squander huge sums of money on pets[iv] but turn their backs on their fellow man, offering only a modicum of assistance to the hungry, homeless and needy. 

 

And of course, no mention is ever made of the Native American holocaust that took place, allowing Americans to usurp their bountiful lands and to exploit its plentiful resources.  With tens of millions of indigenous Americans killed, scholar David Stannard calls the Native American Holocaust, “ the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world.”[v]  Happy Thanksgiving indeed!

 

Thanksgiving Day has special personal significance for me, as it was the day upon which I first set foot in a mosque and was introduced to Islam as a guest of Hojatoleslam Ibrahim Kazerooni.  Last Thanksgiving, I dined as a guest in his home; this year he lost his home due to a mortgage foreclosure and has been forced to move elsewhere.

 

Immediately following Thanksgiving Day is “Black” Friday, a day of unbridled consumer spending, or at least that’s what the capitalists hope for.  The day is called Black Friday supposedly because retailers’ earnings move from the “red” indicating a loss into the “black” for profit, but it appropriately conveys the cutthroat competition for bargains that starts in stores all over America.  Retail sales predictions are down this year[vi] due to the U.S. financial crisis, now officially acknowledged as a recession.[vii]

 

This holiday season has already claimed its first casualty on Black Friday, when a stampede of impatient, bargain-crazed shoppers crashed through the doors of a Wal Mart store in Valley Stream, New York, trampling one employee to death and injuring four others.  Eyewitnesses reported that even when management attempted to close the store after the tragic incident, shoppers refused to leave and continued shopping.[viii]

 

The consumer feeding frenzy usually peaks from December 19 to 23,[ix] but the shopping continues unabated up to the last minute on Christmas Eve, December 24, which is the “Silent Night, Holy Night,” as the well-known German hymn describes the night on which Hazrath Jesus (A.S.) was born. 

 

While expressing concern over toxic chemicals found in the toys with which their own children play,[x] American parents seem unconcerned that Iraqi, Lebanese, Afghani and other children are killed and maimed when they unwittingly play with the toy-like, American-made cluster bomblets.  Broadcasting a clear message of peace and good will to the rest of the world this holiday season, the U.S. has arrogantly refused to join 100 other civilized nations in signing the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans the manufacture and use of these horrible weapons.[xi]

 

Then comes Christmas Day itself with its shallow emphasis on exchange of material possessions and absence of spirituality.  What would Hazrath Jesus (A.S.) think of how distorted the celebration of his birthday has become and how his teachings have been forgotten?  According to one tradition cited by Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Jesus (A.S.) used to prepare food for his followers and say to them, “This is what you must do for the poor.”[xii]

 

While Americans sing the hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” few are aware of Israel’s Apartheid wall encircling the city and its devastating effect on Palestinians who live there, or that the wall has been condemned by the Archbishop of Canterbury.[xiii]  Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are spending this holiday season under a Zionist occupation as they have for the past 60 years since the Nakbah in 1948.

 

December 26 marks another high point in consumerism when, once again, Americans flock to the shopping malls to exchange unwanted gifts and to take advantage of after Christmas bargains.  Some even exchange presents for 12 consecutive days, as alluded to in the old song, “The 12 Days of Christmas.” 

 

During those 12 days of Christmas, 1,200 women and children will be raped and brutalized in the Democratic Republic of Congo so that the rare columbite-tantalite metallic ore known as coltan is available for cell phones, laptops and other consumer electronic gifts.[xiv]  And another 216,000 children around the world will die of hunger. 

 

Americans enjoy the unparalleled, extravagant abundance provided by global capitalism precisely by denying democracy and its benefits to all those who fall outside of the Anglo-American Axis.[xv]  By means of its global, neo-colonial military empire, America extorts material wealth from the sweat, blood and misery of the people it subjugates throughout the rest of the world.

 

Happy Holidays, indeed!  As materialism has made them virtually devoid of meaning, perhaps I should say Happy Hollow Days.

 

“Attend to the needs of the needy,

For your own comfort do not be greedy.

No one will rest in your kingdom and domain,

If all you do is avoid your own discomfort and pain.” – Sa’di[xvi]

 

Yuram Abdullah Weiler

2008-12-07

 
End Notes

Posted by yuram 08:29 | Iraq , Palestine , Iran , Middle East , Lebanon , United States | Comment(4) | Permalink