Religious Celebrations and Social Interaction
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Dr. Michel E. Abs
Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches
This week, the Islamic world celebrates Eid al-Fitr, which comes after a thirty-day fast throughout the month of Ramadan according to the Hijri calendar.
Given the phenomenon of multi-religious societies that pervades the whole world today, interaction between members belonging to one religious social entity and members of another religious entity is a common occurrence in human togetherness.
In the field of social relations, interaction is not religious interaction; rather it is socio-cultural interaction whereby all religious groups that live within one socio-political catchment area relate to one another.
This type of co-relation surely brings people closer, not on the religious, or faith, or metaphysical level, but on the level of the socio-cultural manifestations of this or that religion. In this context, we find that a very large number of Muslim families set up a Christmas tree for the feast of the Nativity, and their children participate in Christmas celebrations, and are often the ones who take the initiative in extending the Christmas greeting to their peers.
Moreover, it is a common occurrence also for Christians to participate in the Ramadan Iftar, celebrating the festivities and even setting an Iftar event themselves and inviting friends to the celebration, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
With the increasing dependence on the media in communication, this type of social interaction has become not merely acceptable but more so necessary. People have even become innovative in using and adapting symbols and tokens to greet those who are not of their own religious affiliation. In this regard, tangible progress has been achieved towards healthy and promising social relationships. The underlying meaning of this behavior, could be expressed in the following statement: I am not of your religion and I do not embrace your faith, but I respect what you believe in.
This is the bedrock of relationships between people in multi-religious and multi-ethnic societies.
The growing trend in migration and displacement in the world will not leave a single, monochromatic society, be it from the ethnic or the religious aspect. It is the destiny of humankind to experience this type of life-in-togetherness, save which what awaits us is a future marked by conflicts of all kinds, the consequences of which are certainly unimaginable due to the presence of weapons of mass destruction.
The thirty-day Ramadan fast may not mean anything to Christians on the faith level, and the Lenten forty-day fast may not mean anything to Muslims. Such religious practices are only meaningful to children of one faith community or the other, as for their social manifestation, it goes beyond the purely religious realm to reach the social and cultural common space.
The fact that a person extends festive greetings to a fellow citizen or to a friend or to a colleague who belongs to a faith community different than his own in no way impairs this person’s very creed. What it really signifies to the contrary is the multi-faceted beauty of a common social and national belongingness.
Acceptance of religious differences is a refined behavior just like any vessel that grows in its value as it is filled with a precious substance. The main thing in all of this is for every person to know that his limits are the interests of the community that lives in one country and within one political entity where the rule of law prevails that defines the space that no human being can cross. The limits of every human being are civil and social peace, and what applies to the homeland applies to the whole world.
Such an acceptance sets solid roots for a stable society in which social growth and mutual maturation are nurtured thus fostering concordance and unity. Communal discords are thus carried from primitive religious and ethnic biased motives to constructive theoretical scientifically sound standpoints that lead to constructive debates advocating trends that lead to social growth. Thus, environment protection and conservation will replace nature destruction, social equity will replace the exploitation of groups at risk, and a reformed system of education will lead to better employment opportunities for graduates, to name but a few examples of easing existing societal constructive conflicts.
Building a culturally, ethnically, or religiously diverse society requires a sound social interaction pathway, provided that such a pathway is accompanied with educational curricula that prepare the individual to be a better citizen, a community member who does not primarily see in his fellow citizen a member in a specific political-sectarian affiliation, but rather considers him as a fellow partner who seeks to promote in a specific humane entity such values that uphold service to society and to humanity as a whole.