My Problem With Valentine's Day

I am not in a University or a school, those days are long gone. Educational institutions are the usual places where hormonal teenagers, participate in the one-day festival and interact with one another on this day. A boy will come up to you with a rose, or a girl might give a boy one heart shaped chocolate. Sure, this used to happen a lot when I was younger and in school. It increased in intensity in University; people started dressing up for this day and gave their crushes or lovers elaborate gifts.

Growing up in a house with a father who was not so strict in my upbringing and a mother who was, I knew what Valentine's Day was and that I should not indulge in the activities. I was tolerant; I did not bad mouth people who participated in it, or even those who wished me - but I never wished anyone or gifted anything to anyone. My mother always stated religious reasons and while younger, I did keep those reasons in mind, to not celebrate this day. As I grew up and my mind developed, logic took over extraneous reasoning and I started to think on my own. Even with logical reasons, I still didn't see a reason to celebrate Valentine's Day.

Now, grown up and supposedly a mature, intellectual, logical thinking adult; I still don't see a reason to celebrate it, even though I do have a person in my life who I madly love and adore. Before you even think about it, no I am not particularly religious and no, I am not a Burqa clad, veiled supposed extremist individual. Over time, my tolerance level has exceeded expectations. Many things which I abhorred before about this day, I have slowly accepted them. For instance, colleagues at the workplace wishing you. That, or people talking about 14th February, the whole day, on a social media platform. I am of the principle, that one shouldn't 'hate'. So, keeping that principle in mind, I do not hate this day. I just don't celebrate it.

Won't even bring Islam or religious reasons in to it, because as Muslims, we do a lot of sinning. This Valentine's Day is just one of the mediocre problems that we have. Yes, I called it a problem. It is a social problem. I see it that way. I think of this day to be fake. Just a means of monetary gain for monopolistic and capitalistic corporations, marketing goods to people that think they want them, but they don't actually need. I see Valentine's Day as a means of making people feel bad about themselves; those people that are deprived of 'love' and have nothing to celebrate about. I see Valentine's Day as a day where people are complexed enough to gift each other expensive things, where the amount of money you spent on a gift or dinner arrangement, means more than the thought put behind doing something special for your special loved one.

Basically, I think of this day as a waste of time. I do believe, that any day can be made special. You don't need to have a dedicated day for love. Then again, this is what I believe. This is what I think. I don't have anything against those people who do celebrate it; those people who go out and buy roses or heart shaped balloons. If they want to indulge in Valentine's Day, it is up to them. That is the whole point of everything; even though I have problems with this day, I have accepted them and I don't hate. I am tolerant. My solution to it is, just don't celebrate it. I don't go out of my way to tell people that you shouldn't. If I would have celebrated it, I wouldn't have told people that they should.

That's the thing. Live and let live. If you don't celebrate it, fine. If you do celebrate it, fine. Do whatever the fuck you want. Don't enforce your opinion on other people. On 14th February 2013, the social media platform Twitter, was abuzz with tweets from different mindsets. Few wished people Happy Valentine's Day. Few talked against it. What did I do? I mostly stayed quiet about the day. Didn't tweet anything related to love or 14th February. It was well and good until, people started to argue and fight.

The people 'against' this day, started personally attacking the people that were celebrating it. What did the people in return do? They started personally attacking those people, that were against Valentine's Day. It got down and dirty, to the point that insults to Islam occurred as well. Not only was Islam humiliated, but jokes about this one particular girl were made on Twitter and everyone started tweeting her name as a hashtag. Seriously feel pity on the girl. Now this is where my REAL problem with Valentine's Day is going to be stated. I have already said, that I don't mind people celebrating it. However, I do have a problem when people argue over Valentine's Day.

I have a problem when people readily diss other people, when people forget to look at themselves first before pin-pointing at others, when people personally attack other people and are mean. Valentine's Day is supposed to be a day of love and prosperity right? Then where did the hate come in from? Where did the propaganda come in from? Where did the brainwashing come in from? It seems patriots of Valentine's Day, turn hypocritical when it comes to celebrating their beloved day. Point is to celebrate love right, not spread hate. Then why all the hate and bad mouthing?

Take for instance, the Pakistani lady Journalist of Express Tribune, who personally saw to it to go out and have a photo shoot with posters etc. in Karachi, promoting Valentine's Day and so called love, in front of advertisements set up by anti-Valentine's day groups. Propaganda right there. On the other hand, there were people promoting 'Haya Day', instead of Valentine's Day. No offense, but even Haya Day's existence is not Islamic. Since it is also a day and anti-Valentine's Day groups were promoting it and urging people to 'celebrate' this instead. Celebrating any kind of days outside of the religion is un-Islamic, which makes Haya Day un-Islamic too. Not highlighting this, because I am pro-Valentine's Day or something. Just wondering where both sides are going so badly wrong.

There is this thing, if you stop someone from doing something, they'll get irritated and go do it. If you want people to stop celebrating Valentine's Day, irritating them is not the way to go about it. Lot of mixed thoughts, stereotypical biased opinions etc. floating around. Stereotypes should be erased, not enforced. There are stereotypes in the mind of Liberal Fascists who think that, only Burqa clad women and people with beards don't celebrate this day. Well for your information, this is not the case. So there. People have their own reasons for celebrating or not celebrating something; the reasons could be religious yes. It is up to them. Both sides should seriously calm the fuck down and stop fighting. You wanna be all red and merry, go ahead. You wanna avoid this day, be my guest.

Comments

  1. Nice read and good point about how corporations encourage marketing for valentines to get money out of it. My personal opinion is that If I were to express love to someone, I would do it on a daily basis and not just once a year. Nevertheless, people should be left alone and celebrate what they want. I fail to understand how 'extremests' find enough time to even bother with other people's lives. I cant even bother about my neighbour who has been living with 3 different women in the past month. I just let him do what he wants to do and if he needs my opinion/assistance, I will gladly help but never enforce it on him

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  2. Islam is about rules and regulations.

    There is nothing specified good and bad in islamic theory of logic. Anything outside the limitation and without rules are declared non-islamic.

    like the drug , sex anything beyound rules(ways) is non-islamic.

    Life is just like a Car and islam is just the perfect rules of safe driving.

    There is aren`t any perfect driver. so if we don`t know the perfect Driving, at least we could avoid ourselves from worse through few measures which we know and could follow.

    Awsome Option 'be guest '
    Nice Post! ماشااللہ

    faheem

    ReplyDelete

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