Daily Times

The daredevil is perhaps having
a moment of relief after all. He was shackled for almost a full month and finally gets to be back in business. What an easy job he has on his hands: to sway people from the righteous path. All he has to do is create a tiny bit of doubt. Human beings are fully capable of taking the ball from there and running. But if you look at it from a different angle, he has the toughest job because he has billions of human beings to work on, almost every minute of the day. So, the holy month of Ramzan is the only month where he gets to rest and plan his strategy for the remaining 11 months.
Philosophically, I often think that it is this darn devil who started this whole mess. Had he prostrated in front of Adam, following the command of the Almighty, things would have been totally different. We would perhaps be at a different place and perhaps in different shape. He has the powers given to him by the Almighty to create doubt, fear and temptation in our hearts and minds. Often those temptations are dead wrong, those desires are absolutely atrocious and excessive but we feel so helpless.
The idea of having a month where we go into a kind of boot camp to contain those temptations and desires is almost exhilarating. Things so basic as food and water are consumed only in certain hours and the rest of the day we end up doing a self-assessment of where we stand: what milestones have we reached in our personal character and what sins can we possibly avoid in the days ahead?
But here comes my counter argument: if the devil is supposed to be in chains for that entire month, then who kills people and why in this very month? Who robs and steals, and why? Why do we have rampant violence, corruption, bribery, slavery, rape, sodomy, backbiting, fraud, deceit, and rude and obnoxious behaviour in the very same holy month? If you were to sit and ponder, technically these are the traits of the devil that we carry within us at all times whether it is Muharram, Safar or any other month including, and not limited to Ramzan. We carry devilish traits at all times. These are inherently within us. We carry both angelic and devilish traits simultaneously. The central processing unit gifted by the Almighty, simply known as the brain, gets to decipher the right information and make appropriate decisions. When I say appropriate, it means according to our brains and our cognitive skills. When the metaphor of the devil being chained is used, it is not in the literal sense. The devil’s ability to alter our course becomes a bit difficult as we try to spend more time in remembrance of our Creator.
As soon as the crescent of Shawwal emerges, our make-believe piety starts to weaken. The transformations on the screen are quite magical and at times comical. Within a day some of the ladies doff their head-covers, men go back to their designer outfits and everyone becomes so overly jovial. The silly question of how your Eid is going is asked from all and sundry. Typical, so typical. Hymns are replaced by Bollywood or Lollywood numbers and people loosen up. This brings me to the point about how most of our efforts to improve or pretend to improve are very misleading. We oscillate between two extremes constantly. This is how it goes in our lives and perhaps will continue till the end of time.
In approximately two months or so, we have to repeat this cycle in a slightly different manner where we brag about the animal that we have chosen for the sacrifice. How strange that the devil within us constantly bugs us and makes us overlook the basic fact that we are trying to emulate a tradition of a prophet to seek the same blessings in our own diluted way.
The same cycle of pomp, glow and show is repeated. Consumerism takes to the fore and we tend to get totally tangled up in its blinding effects. Marketers play with our psyche on how Eid is all about new clothes, shoes and gifts, and they exploit it to the hilt. The evil temptation gets the best of our brains and we empty our wallets in pursuit of happiness that is packaged as being traditional.
Modesty when it comes to such occasions is often considered being irreligious. That is where the fault lines lie. A new outfit or footwear does not renew my rotten and old being that is cringing on the inside. As they say, the devil is in the details and those unseen details are buried within me. For those of you who are still scratching your head and saying a soft “huh?”, have a blessed Eid.

The writer is a Pakistani-US mortgage banker. He blogs at http://dasghar.blogspot.com and can be reached at dasghar@aol.com. He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar