I was going through the 17th February issue of The News Daily when I came across an article, which caught my attention. The topic was “Celebrating Basant amid clerical opposition”. Basant is a festival celebrated in mid February by kite flying and dancing on the rooftops all night long and day as well. After reading it for couple of times I couldn’t resist the urge to write how I felt about the article and the topic. The author, as we can understand from the topic, wants to convince us why we should celebrate Basant and I will try to put forward the reasons why we shouldn’t.
The article starts of with a statement which I will quote, It says “What a beautiful timing of this Basant, a festival of spring, that is timed with the Valentine Day - mixing the two occasions to multiply happiness in a state of prohibition and where Hasba legislation in NWFP awaits to take out the human urge for happiness and love out of our lives.” In this statement the author has clearly categorized Basant and valentine day as events of happiness and love respectively. What the author didn’t mention here is the kind of happiness it brought in the lives of those who lost their loved ones on this day and the kind of love Valentine’s Day represents.
In a saying of our prophet Mohammad (P.B.U.H) it clearly states that one should not follow the ways of the non-believers, so if the author knows the history of Valentine’s Day he will agree with me that it is celebrated in remembrance of Saint Valentine. Thus it clearly means that Valentine’s Day does have Christian roots. Same way Basant does have Hindu roots and therefore Muslims should not celebrate it. The author tried to prove that Basant is a cultural event and has nothing to do with Hindu religion. It is very naive on the behalf of the author if he really believes that. We all know that Hindu culture is totally driven from Hindu religion therefore anything which is part of the Hindu culture is, therefore, part of Hindu religion. No wonder our scholars come out and try to inform us about the complications of celebrating these festivals, like Basant. Secondly, we have two Eids to celebrate and I am pretty confident the author and the like-minded can have enough fun in those festivals and not to mention the other national events we get to celebrate.
The author continues with saying that Basant cannot be banned due to the sole reason of losing life. He continues by comparing those people who died in celebrating Basant with those who lost their lives during performing hajj. I let you be the judge and quote the exact words of the author “You cannot ban a festival because of a smaller deviation or hazard that can be avoided. Can we avoid performing Hajj due to stampede that kills hundreds of pilgrims every year?” The first time when I read this comparison I couldn’t believe I was reading this. The author, I am sorry to say, doesn’t know the status of Muslims who loose their lives in performing one of the pillars of Islam, the very base of a Muslim believe, and as far as Basant goes I am not aware of it having any significance in Islam. Can the author explain this to those who lost their loved ones and are mourning in their remembrance that they died in path of Allah and will be rewarded in hereafter, therefore, this comparison is outrageous in every sense.
A lot more can be said and quoted from the Holy Quran and Sunnah but I don’t see the need. All I want to say is that people like the author of this article tend to forget one thing that Islam is a “Deen” (Complete code of life) not just some religion which only dictates how to worship Almighty and doesn’t guide us in living our daily lives.
I ask Allah (SWT) to enlighten us with the knowledge of Our Deen, Islam, so we could be better judges of what is better for us as an Ummah.