December 24th around 11 30 in the night I was all decked up waiting for my parents to make a move, we had to leave for church, Mass was about to begin in half an hour. While I was waiting I came across a post on facebook that too posted by a friend, the post said “It is not permissible for a Muslim to greet Christians with the traditional Christmas greeting because it means celebrating the day of “God’s” birth – a concept absolutely abhorrent to Muslims and in direct contradiction to the Qur’aanic verse, “He (Allah) did not give birth nor was He born.” (Qur'an 112:3)”
At first I was really offended at the fact that how one could be so rude and insensitive and post and write such a thing for a religion that to on their main event. I wanted to give a rude answer, something like “we never say that for any of your religious festivities or any other religious occasions, we don’t treat you differently, then why do you? Or are you so desensitized that you actually don’t care you could hurt someone emotionally”, but then I thought to myself “not a smart move Rouchelle.” And so this is what I thought I could do. I could write about it so here I am writing about it.
Firstly Christmas does not in any way mean celebrating “God’s birth”. Christmas is the birth of our Messiah Jesus Christ, also known to Muslims as Hazrat Eesa Aleh Salam.
Just like Islam Christians also believe in one God Almighty and they do believe that God did not give birth nor was He born.
Wishing someone a “Merry Christmas” does not mean one is accepting the divinity of Jesus it is a greeting for rejoicing on the birth of Jesus.
Secondly the questions I thought I could ask my friend still remain in my head, is it that people are so desensitized that they don’t realize that saying things about ones religion on the day itself could hurt one or even galvanize one into taking a serious wrong action.
Christians after all are the “People of the Book” the ones who follow monotheistic Abraham religions and which are older than Islam.
Pakistan is an independent state, at least that’s what Quaid said and I believe every religion, every sect deserves respect regardless.
