Valentine's Day: A Muslim slant

Yes, and cleverly woven it is to. Signing off now - going to bed early. Making one of my regular quinqennial visits to your broken but fair city tomorrow to savour the delights of 'brownie' fishing in your delightful sewers. Regards to one and all.

Customs that were once 'foreign' and little known to the British public can be disconcerting at first. The surprising thing really is that people assume those who settle here would want to forget or give up their customs, and that communities can be here many years before the public know basic facts about them. By that time, customs such as gathering in groups to flagellate themselves with blades on strings are just ordinary things that ordinary people do. Perhaps it's something younger people would generally know more about, from cross cultural studies at school?

Apparently it does take all sorts. With it's international population, the UK now has a huge mixture of customs, beliefs and ways of going on. Everything from Chinese Triads, Rastafarian music, Polish sausage shops, and bucket curry, to Arab princes and Russian oligarchs. The British public will probably be surprised as things go on and all these different cultures settle in enough to have a more and more high profile effect on mainstream culture. We have chosen to have a multi ethnic population, so, it's going to be a multi cultural future.

Mr. Cameron is trying to tempt an unlimited number of Indians to come here, and we are expecting an influx of Romanians and Bulgarians before too long, so there seems to be no turning back on the multi-culturalisation of Britain.

Does make you wonder though, about attacks on traditions like Valentines day.
http://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/77926/florists-targeted-by-thieves

cyfrifia wrote: - - - -
By that time, customs such as gathering in groups to flagellate themselves with blades on strings are just ordinary things that ordinary people do. Perhaps it's something younger people would generally know more about, from cross cultural studies at school?

No Cyfrifia. You seem to have got rather carried away there.

There’s a prime need to understand that ‘Religious practices’ are different to cultural traditions.

A simplistic analogy, internationally, can be seen in very rural versus urban cultural traditions.


Different religious practices are only protected here if they stay within mainstream law, which regulates social conduct and proscribes threatening, harming, or otherwise endangering the health, safety, and moral welfare of other people including, of course, children.


I doubt the burglary of Valentine’s Day flowers that you posted a link for was anything at all to do with attacking the tradition, more likely opportune thieving, from where just a short journey could quickly get the goods ‘Over the Border.’

It's not clear that religious practices are so entirely different to cultural traditions, they blend into each each other. Family and tribal structures, hairstyles, gender roles, political structures, clothing, foods, festivals and behaviors can all have both religious and cultural aspects and implications.

The point about the flower display theft is not that it was inevitably an attack on valentine-ism, just that with such an interplay of cultures, it makes you think. It had never occurred to me before that anyone would attack valentines day, but there it is.

I imagine some lucky lady somewhere got a lovely bouquet with bits of glass in. Got nothing to do with an attack on Valentines day.

Very probably so, a fair guess based on knowing the area and what people's motivations and habits are.

The point is that, with the change in the population of the UK, ideas and behaviors are changing quickly, things we might have taken for granted are changing.

The cultural makeup of the UK is very variable, local mixes of various cultures have their own character, and people's experiences very different, depending where they live.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21511904

Quote:"Something quite remarkable happened in London in the first decade of the new millennium. The number of white British people in the capital fell by 620,000 - equivalent to the entire population of Glasgow moving out.

The consequence, as revealed by the latest census, is that white Brits are now in a minority in London, making up just 45% of its residents."

About time I took all my Valentine cards down now. Well the one I got anyway.