And the funny thing is, they sound just like Americans!!!!!
What is not funny is the degradation of their celebration, which makes me very sad.
I do not like any groups partying, celebrations or festivities -- the FUN -- to be scaled back and tainted.
And the Muslims know how to do it so well.
"Inflation and discord curb Ramadan festivities; High food costs, unrest alter how Muslims celebrate" by Ali Sultan/Associated Press October 13, 2007
ZANZIBAR, Tanzania - Last year, Maryam Juma marked the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in style.
She spent $40 on a goat, roasted it to perfection and invited 10 relatives to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the festival at the end of Ramadan. And she bought new clothes for each of her three children.
But this year, the skyrocketing price of food and other goods has forced her to cut back on the celebration - a story being played out across much of the Muslim world.
"I had to think carefully about who to invite this year, just a small group of family," Juma said in Zanzibar, where 98 percent of the people are Muslim. "The prices of basic items are very high, and I cannot afford them."
The Eid al-Fitr festival is one of the happiest dates on the Islamic calendar, but in the Mideast yesterday the three-day holiday began in an atmosphere of crisis, violence, fear, and isolation.
In Baghdad, Beirut, and Gaza, the beginning of the festival was somber and muted.
"I can't feel the spirit on this Eid," said Um Mohammed, a 55-year-old widow and mother of four in Azamiyah, a northern Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad. "My elder son was killed last year by gunmen and majority of my relatives either killed, displaced or live in remote areas."
Some predominantly Sunni countries delayed the start of Eid until today. The beginning and end of Ramadan, which lasts about 30 days, varies among Muslims, depending on the sighting of the new moon.
It might seem contradictory that higher food prices would be a concern during Ramadan, as Muslims fast daily during the month commemorating the revelation of the Koran. But each day of fasting ends with friends and families gathering for meals, sometimes sharing delicacies that may not appear on tables for another year.
And then comes the Eid feasting - for those able to pay for it.
Consumers worldwide have seen food prices climb this year, driven in part by China's economic boom and the growing biofuels industry, which is cutting into grain supplies. Heavy rains in Western Europe and a drought in Eastern Europe damaged crops.
In Egypt, the government said the price of basic food items has risen by 48 percent in the past year. Al Ahram newspaper reported Ramadan consumers have been "shocked" by spikes in prices for meat, fruit and vegetables, dairy products, eggs, bread, cooking oil, sugar, tea, and soft drinks.
Last month, violent protests over the cost of bread prompted the Moroccan government to annul a 30 percent price increase that would have taken effect just before Ramadan.
Local media in Malaysia report that Eid cookies and cakes cost more this year because wheat flour prices went up nearly 20 percent last month.
Rice, spaghetti, and cooking oil have nearly doubled in price in Somalia's violence-wracked capital, and many blame the lack of security combined with the monsoon season, which makes it perilous for ships to reach port.
"I am the breadwinner of a large family and I can't afford to buy essential foods," said Mogadishu resident Isaaq Hussein. The inflation rate in Zanzibar has reached 12 percent - bad news for any festive season, said Abdullah Kibao, the chief government economist. He blamed fluctuating fuel prices, unregulated trade, and the ongoing rehabilitation of the main port.
Zanzibar's government says it is doing all it can to bring down inflation. But Salma Massoud of the Ministry of Trade said businesses should shoulder some of the blame for price gouging. "They are hiking or self-regulating the prices of items just to make big margin of profits," he said.
Over the past year, the 43-year-old Juma has seen the cost of a pair of shoes go from about $20 to nearly $50. The prices of rice, bread, and flour have increased about 20 percent, she said.
Despite the difficulties, Juma carries on. Instead of a whole goat, she is buying chicken for Eid.
In Baghdad yesterday, public festivities were rare as Sunni Arabs began to mark Eid. Bomb attacks, shootings, and sectarian killings have forced many Iraqis to temper all celebrations.
Most of Iraq's Shi'ites, along with those in Iran, were to celebrate Eid today.
For Gazans, the first Eid under Hamas control was marked by international isolation, empty shelves, and bitter internal rivalries. Even Friday prayers were divided along factional lines, with separate locations for supporters of Gaza's Hamas rulers and their rivals from Fatah.
In Lebanon, Sunni Muslims and Shi'ites who follow Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah started marking Eid yesterday. Others who follow Sheik Abdul Amir Qabalan, deputy president of the Higher Shi'ite Muslim Council, the highest religious authority for the country's 1.2 million Shi'ites, are expected to begin marking the feast today."
"Celebration Marks End of Ramadan in Lebanon" by THANASSIS CAMBANIS
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Oct. 12 — In the dark hour before dawn, Soraya Naame joined the throng of Muslims visiting Martyrs’ Cemetery, clutching bundles of myrtle branches and palm fronds as tall as she was.
Ms. Naame, 44, was marking the first day of Id al-Fitr, one of the biggest celebrations of the Muslim calendar. It signals the end of the month of Ramadan.
Modernity has swept over and changed some of the holiday’s rituals — including a last-minute shopping rush that recalls the Christmas retail season in the United States — but it has not altered the holiday’s core, on display at sunrise in this necropolis.
“The dead are expecting their families at this hour,” Ms. Naame said, seated with two sisters on the edge of her father’s burial place. The sisters were smoking, reading the Koran and chatting, settled as if in their own living room for an hour’s visit beside their father’s grave.
The three women had already fashioned an arch over the grave out of braided palm fronds, and they had planted bunches of myrtle branches in the grave itself.
“It eases the suffering of the dead,” Ms. Naame said, citing a tradition of decorating graves with flora that dates to the time of the Prophet Muhammad.
Id al-Fitr brings to a climax a month of Ramadan rituals intended to draw Muslims closer to their families and to God, with an emphasis on acts of generosity like providing meals to the poor.
Id, which lasts three days, is the first time in a month that observant Muslims are allowed to consume food during daylight hours. By tradition, it is also a day when relatives are supposed to gather and feast together.
“Today we’ll eat every meal together as a family, breakfast, lunch and dinner,” said Bilal Yassin, 27, a jeweler who was clowning with his sister and neighbor at the grave of his grandfather, who died in 1998. “This is a blessed, happy day.”
Id begins the day after the new moon is spotted at the end of Ramadan, so the date varies from country to country and sect to sect, depending on which astronomers are followed.
This year in Lebanon, Sunni and most Shiite Muslims observed the beginning of Id on Friday morning. Shiite clerical authorities had announced the date at the beginning of the week, but Sunni Muslims did not learn until after sunset on Thursday — when their highest clerical authority in Lebanon, the Dar al-Fatwa, issued an announcement — that their holiday would begin the following morning.
Within moments of the announcement, a cacophony of fireworks as loud as gunfire broke out in the city center, and traffic jams clogged shopping streets festooned with strings of Ramadan lights and signs advertising sales. Families stocked up on special Id pastries called maamoul, crusty pockets filled with candied nuts or date paste.
When he was a child, Samir Zaatiti said, Id simply afforded a chance for families to eat together, give the children spending money, and send them off for a treat like a movie.
Now, he said with a sigh, “it has become more like your Christmas.” Mr. Zaatiti, 50, and his wife were loading maamoul into a half-dozen boxes at a crowded pastry shop on Barbour Street late Thursday night, rushing to prepare for the hordes of visitors they expected on Friday.
Parents are expected to buy new clothes for their family as an Id gift and embark on a ritualistic round of visits beginning with immediate family and culminating with distant relatives.
“We celebrate with all the Muslims of the world, and with our family,” Mr. Zaatiti said. But he added that he did not like the new twists to the holiday, like the last-minute shopping sprees and the excursions parents are supposed to organize for their families on the second and third days of the festival.
“It has become much more programmed than when I was a kid,” he said. “I don’t like things that are overprogrammed.”
After the end of Id, the festive trappings of Ramadan will come down: the green and white strings of lights on the mosque minarets, the garlanded arches over the major shopping streets, the larger-than-life dioramas portraying virtues like justice and charity at major intersections.
Imad Abou Moussa, 40, smoked a water pipe outside his clothing store for infants, Baby Dream, late Thursday night, waiting for the last burst of Id shoppers. The retail season was weak this year, and he blamed Lebanon’s political crisis for leaving people with less money to spend.
But he says he has enjoyed Ramadan, known as “the generous month, the month of purity.” He has fasted every day, and has given zakat, the contribution to the poor required of every Muslim.
And on Id, after a morning at the cemetery and an afternoon with his family, Mr. Abou Moussa planned to celebrate the end of Ramadan by carousing a little with his friends.
“Tomorrow, God willing, I’ll have my first drink in a month,” he said, rolling the smoke from his water pipe in his mouth. “A glass of arak.”
[You know what, readers? In the most Christian ways possible, I love our "enemies."
Why are we killing them and waging war on them when they have never done anything to us?]
