Shalom – Salaam and the Peace of Having a Meal Together – Benefits of Cute Card Continued.

 

I’ve just sent out my greetings to Muslim friends for the end of the Holy Month of Ramadan. As I’ve been doing for the past two-years, I got my favourite designer of “Cute Cards” to get to work. The Cute Card designer decided that she would draw cakes and sweets, which I thought was in a funny way appropriate.

 

I will always remember the Haji taxi driver who told me, what I believed was the wisest thing I’ve ever heard about religion. He said, “Islam is not the first religion of man – the first religion of man is salaam – when people shake hands and become friends and achieve peace.” To me, this man’s statement made more sense than the word of the multitude of religious leaders I’ve spoken to in the past decade. When it comes to the Abrahamic faiths you have too many so-called religious leaders trying to sell you that they have the only path of the almighty and they’re trying to get you to work up a hatred against the competition. When it comes to the faiths out of South and East Asia, its inevitably about how has the best magic spells.

I actually believe in a higher power and I do believe that one’s individual path to the Almighty is very personal. However, I’ve had too many experiences of decency with people of various faiths to believe that anyone has an exclusive on God. My beneficiaries in life have inevitably been South Asians and Muslims (my current employer being both). The most honourable man I know (as in his reputation was such that his staff described his word as being better than any signed contract) is a Wahabi Muslim. At the same time the most humble and decent man I know is a staunch Christian (think of a full colonel who gets out of his car to greet a lowly sergeant in his army camp). I’ve been told by a Saudi official that as much as the average Arab does not like Israeli policy, he’s found the Jews to be among the kindest people on the planet. I grew up finding peace in Buddhist environments as well as Christian churches.

So, whilst I am a horribly flawed character in so many ways, I’ve taken pride in being able to see the decency of people of all faiths and conversely, I’ve also seen the worst in humans of all faiths. So, when someone gets up and tells me that he (they usually are) has the exclusive on spirituality and that everyone is going to hell, I take the point that the person telling me that is selling something other than the divine.

Religious nationalist are, as a rule of thumb, anything but servants of God in as much as their aim is to collect souls for their version of God rather than to make humanity as a whole better. Ironically, this best pointed out by Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the first President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as narrated on the Wikipedia page of his son, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the current president:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_bin_Zayed_Al_Nahyan

 

So, how can we demonstrate to each other that we are inevitably “All God’s Creatures?” The answer is through the sharing of our most basic need – food. All of us, regardless of race, language or religion need to eat and when we sit down and share a meal, we create a bond. Anthropologist like to talk about culture being about “shared experience,” and there’s nothing quite like sitting down and sharing a meal.

Now, there is this thing about Muslims and Jews being particularly difficult to cater for in as much as they have special dietary requirements and the inevitable question is, how do you sit down and share something so precious as a meal with that person when they have dietary restrictions on what you hold dear.

Interestingly enough, human ingenuity comes into play. Its now possible for enjoy Chinese food that is perfectly Halal, and this includes variations like “char siew” (which is normally pork but to clear the halal part, can now be done with chicken.)

 

 So, as the Holy Month of Ramadan ends, let’s look at how we can share meals with our Muslim friends. If we sit down and share food, we’re going to make friends. Let’s find ways of making food that all of us can enjoy. We need to create opportunities for all of us to be friends. When we create division and hatred against people of different faiths, we move away from the divine. When we bring people together, we move closer to the divine.