The Callous Offense of ‘The Muslim Christmas Song’

Last updated on: December 22, 2017 at 5:01 pm by Farouk A. Peru

The Callous Offense of ‘The Muslim Christmas Song’ 2017-12-22T17:01:17+00:00 Farouk A. Peru

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The ‘assimilatibility’ (ease of assimilation) of the Muslims into Western society is a great topic for social media attention. You will find stories like ‘Muslim taxi driver refuses to take passenger with dog (preferably a guide dog for the blind)’ or ‘Muslim sales assistant refuses to sell condoms to unmarried couple or alcohol’. Muslims are seen as unable to fit into mainstream society and ripe for a healthy dose of finger pointing.

Christmas is probably the best time for this exercise too. What with some Islamofascist ‘scholars’ telling us how ‘haraam’ (forbidden) Christmas is even to the point of wishing someone ‘Merry Christmas’, it would be easy for the average Islamophobe to make a case that, in fact, Muslims are very anti-Christmas. One especially nutty ‘scholar’ actually said wishing ‘Merry Christmas is worse than murder’!

And now, we have the Muslim Christmas song!

Before I actually listened to this song, I actually thought ‘now here is some hope’! I personally love Christmas so much! Please don’t tell me about the theological problems or the historical inaccuracies. Those are not what Christmas is about for me at all anyway. For me, Christmas is a season of giving and appreciation. I buy presents for people close to me and enjoy a nice turkey lunch with all the trimmings. Christmas is very secular for me as it probably is for most people. The God I worship has no problem with it at all.

The Muslim Christmas song is something else though. It is sang to the tune of ‘Deck the Halls’ but does not keep to the not-overtly-Christian lyrics of the original song. It also makes no attempt to universalise the Christmas message at all. It could have easily been about appreciating the ones you love, making them happy, feeding the homeless or anything like that. That would have been most welcome, I think.

Instead, it switches the ‘fa la la’ bit to ‘laa ilaha illa Allah’ (there is no god but Allah). While I appreciate the message of tawheed as much as the next guy (I even co-wrote a book on it, to shamelessly self-promote!), to insert it here is simply out of place. On top of that, we have some praise Muhammad and blessings (salawat) be upon him. Jesus and his mother Mary came second in this. At least they were mentioned at all! This is not the kind of song that would build the spirit of the a universal brotherhood/sisterhood.

Perhaps the intention of this song was to show Muslim appreciation for Christmas but even so it really fell short of the mark. There is no Christmas element to this song besides some suggestion in the theme of the video. It would be difficult for the wider community to appreciate this gesture at all. It is a real pity but until we understand that we cannot desecrate elements of other people’s culture and religion, Muslim ‘assimilatibility’ will remain something Islamophobes take advantage of.

Islamophobia

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