Muslims sending mixed messages on bigotry

Ray Hanania:

It’s hard to imagine but according to many American Muslims, Halloween is a demonic American and Christian practice where children dress up in horrific costumes and worship Satan.

Muslims around the country are preparing for Oct. 31 like it is a new Sept. 11, warning their own to secure their homes, round up their children, and await the demonic onslaught.

They have urged Muslim families to firmly “educate” American school teachers and insist that the Halloween practices of allowing children to dress up during school hours be forbidden.

They have cautioned Muslim families to lock the doors, close the windows and turn out the lights in the hopes that the “little devil worshippers” will skip their homes and not cause an anti-Muslim mob-like riot.

Apparently, while American Muslims are among the first to complain when they are victims of discrimination, many have no qualms about discriminating against non-Muslims.

Because that is exactly what the American Muslims are doing when they criticize Halloween and urge their children not to participate. It is anti-American and anti-Christian discrimination that is far too common in the Muslim World and often ignored, for the sake of better international relations.

But that doesn’t mean Americans should tolerate this kind of disrespect from some of the more extremist elements of the Muslim American community.

Today’s Halloween has nothing to do with the pagan ritual once called “The Celtic Day of the Dead” and practiced by Druids that many Muslims wrongly insist is the basis for Halloween today.

Of course, many Muslim Americans also denounce Valentine’s Day and other traditional Christian and American events as “demonic” too, even though they are not.

Now, I looked for a few Druids to see if I could get the straight story, but apparently, there haven’t been any around for more than one thousand years.

Never mind, though, to American Muslims who arrogantly believe their religion is far superior to all others. And they look for every opportunity to prove it to people.

But Halloween? The criticism is shameful.

The American Muslim Association of North American is only one of dozens of Muslim organizations and mosques that have issued “warnings” to Muslims to “protect their children from this evil.”

AMANA claimed, “Samhain was the name of the Druid god of the dead. The Druids were a religious order amongst the Celts. On this day, they would try to appease their Lord of Death. These Druids also believed that witches rode on broom sticks and that ghosts were the cause of supernatural occurrences.” The belief was that on the eve of the Celtic New Year (which for them was October 31), the souls of the dead people roamed the land of the living. The Devil, spirits and witches were also believed to be moving about and at the height of their power.”

They based their criticism on information distributed by a Chicago-based radio show called “Radio Islam” which has been accused often of not only discriminating against Christians and Jews who disagree with their sometimes extremist policies, but also against Christian Arabs who challenge their rationalizing of terrorist organizations.

Sometime in the 8th Century, the Pope tried to de-Satanize the practice and turn Christians away from the Pagan ritual which had eventually become a superstition and not a widely practiced “holiday” in Europe.

So he declared that the following day, November 1, would be recognized by Christians as “All Saints Day” to refocus the world (1200 years ago mind you) away from the idolatry and demonic rituals and practices of the dark ages.

Many centuries later, Christian communities around the world including in the United States christened October 31 as “Halloween.”

It is a day of childish fun, meant if anything to mock the ridiculous practices of the Dark Ages. Children and adults dress up in costumes of all sorts, frightening and not.

Children go around knocking on doors of their neighbors and friends and scream out the demonic vitriole:

“Trick or treat. Smell my feet. Give me something good to.”

In fact, costumes span the political and social barometer including past and current American presidents, and even derogatory racial depictions of Arabs, which I find offensive, but not for religious reasons.

Rather than encouraging their followers to isolate themselves from a harmless American tradition that has nothing to do with any religion or pagan practices at all, Muslims should drop the “I am better than you” attitude and start at least to pretend they are real Americans.

Most are. But the few who do spread these lies are doing a disservice to the Muslim community and expose claims of anti-Muslim bigotry as the cries of hypocrites.

American Muslims wrongly denounce Halloween as a Pagan, Satanic holiday