Pakistan’s high court has banned feasts at weddings as being un-Islamic:
The court bench then went a step further to criticise some of the most popular customs linked to South Asian weddings, including the colourful rituals of mayun and mehndi… and baraat… Describing them as social evils, the court said the state should take steps to eradicate them.
I found truth to be stranger than fiction:
The excision of all Hindu-inspired culture from a nation cleaved Siamese-style from its dominant twin leaves it with nothing more than echoes of Arabic, a thin rind of astringent Wahabbism and insufficiently comprehended talibs, freshly imported. This fingernail clipping, this ecliptic corona, this Venn diagram of loss leaves the nation with a desert of prohibited activities enumerated with the heavy delicacy of a tax code.
Amardeep jests that it’s a good remedy for boring weddings:
… it’s a little ridic. to dance for six hours on the street celebrating the marriage of a distant cousin one (sometimes) barely knows, who is sitting uncomfortably on a horse, while a band of profoundly underpaid horn-players tries to do a very un-funky version of “Koi Kahe Kehta Rahe.”
What’s next? No fine clothing because it’s an ostentatious display? Really the solution to ostentatious weddings isn’t to ban everything, in my humble opinion.
Really, what’s the point of a wedding celebration without food?
Okay, Pakistan does not have to conform to the religious conservationalism of the surrounding countries. That is pure bull$#!╦. Everything else in Pakistan is already banned, and now this. Wait and see and they’ll be banning music and popcorn and shoes. haha.
Well, I would like to inform the both of you (Uzma and Shakti) that Islam doesn’t prohibit food, clothing or a fun-filled wedding, but it does condemn extravagance, and I am sure you see why. Just for a nights grandeur people end up paying debts all their lives. What, then, is the point of spending, or rather wasting all that wealth? Like I mentioned above, Islam does not prohibit food, clothing or a fun-filled wedding, as long as we dont spend profligately on these weddings. Islamically, the ideal Muslim wedding should be simple, in which there is a Nikah (official marriage) ceremony followed by a Walimah. This is the Sunnah (The practice of the Prophet (peace be upon him)), and as Muslims we’ve got to try and implement the Sunnahs of the Prophet (PBUH). So Shakti, it’s not like the wedding hosts shouldn’t provide food and send their guests home hungry, there is no wisdom in that. A wedding ceremony must have enough food for the guests, and not waste alot of food. And Uzma, it really isn’t the question of conforming to the religious conservationalism of the surrounding countries. If Pakistan claims to be an Islamic country and follows the Shariah, then it isn’t conforming to the conservationalism of surrounding countries but instead, it is conforming to the laws of Shariah.