Love is the Pure and most auspicious treasure of ones life. We
cannot imagine even our lives without Love. It’s the soul of every human being
and true human beings are those who express their gratitude and Love not only
for human beings but for animals also. But there comes a point, why to specify
a single day for such an important aspect of our humanity? Why to limities our love and loving
expressions for just this day?????. People say We need to celebrate this
“Valentine Day” because we celebrate our birth day, we celebrate Mother’s and
Teachers Day.. To me, we as Muslims have
respect and love for our parents and teachers each and every day through the
year. We celebrate every day as our love day.
Let say this is the only day of celebrations of our Love…then why our
love is limited to a girl (AS THIS IS THE ONLY TREND OF Valentine Day)…..why
not to our parents our brothers and sisters, our friends and
colleagues???? Let me say we hate the western
society why because they put their parents in old houses, they use and change
their woman’s in the name of love each time and searching for a better partner.
You know why we hate them because we are of the opinion that there should be no
boundaries for loving our beloved ones, just for a day or moment. To us Love is
immortal and should be celebrated every day.
But To be very honest, to celebrate a day as Love day is not a
problem. The problem is that it has now become a tradition a festival which has
its own history and if we study the details of this history we are no more
supposed to celebrate. I am sorry Valentine Day… But I am a Muslim.
The story of
the Festival of Love (Valentine’s Day)
The Festival of Love was one of the festivals of the pagan Romans, when
paganism was the prevalent religion of the Romans more than seventeen centuries
ago. In the pagan Roman concept, it was an expression of “spiritual love”.
There were myths associated with this pagan festival of the Romans, which
persisted with their Christian heirs. Among the most famous of these myths was
the Roman belief that Romulus, the founder of Rome, was suckled one day by a
she-wolf, which gave him strength and wisdom. The Romans used to celebrate this
event in mid-February each year with a big festival. One of the rituals of this
festival was the sacrifice of a dog and a goat. Two strong and muscular youths
would daub the blood of the dog and goat onto their bodies, then they would
wash the blood away with milk. After that there would be a great parade, with
these two youths at its head, which would go about the streets. The two youths
would have pieces of leather with which they would hit everyone who crossed
their path. The Roman women would welcome these blows, because they believed
that they could prevent or cure infertility.
The connection between Saint Valentine and this festival
Saint Valentine is a name which is given to two of the ancient “martyrs” of the
Christian Church. It was said that there were two of them, or that there was
only one, who died in Rome as the result of the persecution of the Gothic
leader Claudius, c. 296 CE. In 350 CE, a church was built in Rome on the site
of the place where he died, to perpetuate his memory. When the Romans embraced
Christianity, they continued to celebrate the Feast of Love mentioned above,
but they changed it from the pagan concept of “spiritual love” to another
concept known as the “martyrs of love”, represented by Saint Valentine who had
advocated love and peace, for which cause he was martyred, according to their
claims. It was also called the Feast of Lovers, and Saint Valentine was
considered to be the patron saint of lovers.
One of their false beliefs connected with this festival was that the names of
girls who had reached marriageable age would be written on small rolls of paper
and placed in a dish on a table. Then the young men who wanted to get married
would be called, and each of them would pick a piece of paper. He would put
himself at the service of the girl whose name he had drawn for one year, so
that they could find out about one another. Then they would get married, or
they would repeat the same process again on the day of the festival in the
following year. The Christian clergy reacted against this tradition, which they
considered to have a corrupting influence on the morals of young men and women.
It was abolished in Italy, where it had been well-known, then it was revived in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when in some western countries there
appeared shops which sold small books called “Valentine’s books”, which
contained love poems, from which the one who wanted to send a greeting to his
sweetheart could choose. They also contained suggestions for writing love
letters.
It was also said concerning the origins of this holiday that when the Romans
became Christian, after Christianity had become widespread, the Roman emperor
Claudius II decreed in the third century CE that soldiers should not get married,
because marriage would distract them from the wars they used to fight. This
decree was opposed by Saint Valentine, who started to perform marriages for the
soldiers in secret. When the emperor found out about that, he threw him in jail
and sentenced him to execution. In prison, he (Saint Valentine) fell in love
with the jailer’s daughter, but this was a secret because according to
Christian laws, priests and monks were forbidden to marry or fall in love. But
he is still regarded highly by the Christians because of his steadfastness in
adhering to Christianity when the emperor offered to pardon him if he forsook
Christianity and worshipped the Roman gods; then he would be one of his closest
confidantes and he would make him his son-in-law. But Valentine refused this
offer and preferred Christianity, so he was executed on 14 February 270 CE, on
the eve of February 15, the festival of Lupercalis. So this day was named for
this saint. In The Story of Civilization, it says that the Church devised a
calendar in which every day was designated as the feast day of one of the
saints.
In England, Saint Valentine’s Day was to come at the end of winter. When that
day came, according to them, the birds mated enthusiastically in the forests,
and the young men would put flowers on the windowsills of the homes of the
girls whom they loved. (The Story of Civilization by Will Durant, 15/23) The
Pope designated the day of the death of Saint Valentine, February 14, 270 CE,
as a festival of love. Who is the Pope? He is the “the archbishop, the supreme
pontiff of the universal church, the successor of Saint Peter.” Look at this
“archbishop” and how he prescribed for them the observance of this festival
which was an innovation in their religion. This reminds us of what Allah says
(interpretation of the meaning): “They (Jews and Christians) took their rabbis
and their monks to be their lords besides Allah (by obeying them in things
which they made lawful or unlawful according to their own desires without being
ordered by Allah)…”[al-Tawbah 9:31]
