Sunday September 14, 2014
By Bashir Goth
It was one
of the most refreshing and reassuring weddings I attended for a long time,
almost over a quarter of a century. Refreshing because since the grip of extremist
trends of Ideologies that shun everything that
appears, tastes and sounds genuine and indigenous in local cultures and
replaces it with its narrow and sterile interpretation that deprives all kinds
of enjoyment, music and beauty from life, it was the first time I saw an
inclusive wedding where all community members regardless of sex and age
celebrated together the delight and festivities of a real Somali wedding.
It was
refreshing because it was a joy to see family couples, sometimes with their
children, coming to the wedding hall and taking their seats together. No walls
divided between women and men, no barricades, no segregation; all well groomed
and decently but elegantly dressed for the occasion with traditional Somali Diric
and hagoog dominating the scene while the youth dressed trendy clothes to their taste in all fashion
styles. Even elderly women who came were dressed in reminiscently Somali style
without alien black shrouds.
It was
refreshing because the bride and bride-groom made a grand entrance with young
men and women as best men and women walking in front of them hand-in-hand. The
whole audience fell silent to watch the beauty of youth strolling, a beauty
that they knew the Somali people had, a beauty they knew was never meant to be
depressed, stunted and denied to breathe and enjoy its prime. “This is the best
wedding, I have seen for a long time,” said a friend sitting next to me. I also
overheard similar remarks from other people both men and women, with a tone that
underlined the nostalgia the Somali people have for their superior culture that
they had lost due to the imposition of extremist ideologies on them; Ideologies
that see sin mushrooming everywhere where even a teenage son has to police the
behavior of his mother let alone his sisters lest they go astray as if the
whole Somali community is devoid of moral values and had to be forced on it.
It was
refreshing because the party opened with short speeches and poems by old
generation men who gave tributes to the married couple and their courage and
that of their parents to revive the genuine communal festivities of our
culture. It was refreshing because the youth, men and women, danced together to
all kinds of music, Somali, Arabic, Hindi and western to make the night
memorable for the wedding couple. And the elderly joined the dance sometimes,
gracing the occasion and embracing it as a truly community event.
It was refreshing
because the youth, both men and women, also joined their parents in performing traditional
Somali folklore dances. Refreshing because it was a happy, inclusive,
celebratory community event, a true picture of what a wedding should be, and
not the austere, segregated and gloomy occasions that Somali weddings have
become lately.
The wedding
was also reassuring because it proved that the Somali people have started to
rebel against the recent trend of segregating women and men in social occasions
and denying a common memory to the marred couple about their best day and the
community at large.
A wedding is
a celebration of life, a celebration of a journey to begin for a young couple
who would have their own children to preserve human existence, one of the noblest
missions of a person’s life on earth; an occasion that demands a communal
festivity in which all members of the society attend and contribute. And to Somalis, weddings were traditionally
one of the most important community festivals where new poems were born, new
dances improvised, new jokes and riddles weaved, collective memory invoked, romantic
melodies enjoyed, decent courting incubated and new loves stories started.
But since
the encroachment of the extremist Salafist, and Wahhabist sects on
the Somali culture, most of the weddings and particularly those in western
capitals have become not places of joy and communal sharing but places of
cultural doom, guilt, censorship and draconian rules of moral policing that ban
music, singing, and interacting and sharing between genders, thus depriving the
youth of experiencing the true culture and identity of their people.
Oddly enough
also it is the Somali weddings that take place in American and European cities
that wholeheartedly accepted such alien cultural austerity and it has to be a
place like Abu Dhabi, in the heart of the Arab world, that Somali people find
the mental freedom to invoke the true synergy of their culture and Islam in the
way they knew it over the centuries. An Islam that seamlessly blends with their
culture, an Islam that accepts and not shuns domestic culture, Islam that
embraces life and the beauty of living, Islam that enriches people’s lives with
arts, music , dance, and good artistic taste and passion for freedom of
cultural imagination, Islam that binds together with love and brotherhood, and does
not incriminate them for sharing a public space together to celebrate the
wedding of their culture, Islam that enriches our culture and not stifles it,
Islam that is a higher calling from a fair God that entails beauty, mercy, perfection,
and freedom; and not a lowly edict from
a tyrant demigod. For the Prophet told us that: “God is beautiful and loves
beauty.” And no wonder with this in mind Somali women used to welcome the bride
to her home while singing: “Hoy Nebow , Nuur Allow, Maxamad Nebi Magac
Samow.” (Oh Prophet, Oh light from
Allah, Oh Muhammad, what a prophet of good name you are.)
I have to
conclude this piece by congratulating and saluting the wedding of Ayaan Omar
Ahmed Barre hailing from Borama and Zakariya Abdulla Fadal Gabaxady hailing
from Oodweyne held in Abu Dhabi on 11th September 2014, as well as
their parents for their courage to reject the dictates of the cultural
brainwashing and to revive the beauty of inclusive Somali communal festivities.
Source: www.Hanua.blogspot.com