CAIRO: A Qatari newspaper has published an article slamming Valentine’s Day, with the author throwing scorn at those in the Arab world celebrating Western occasions.
The opinion piece — titled “Kill Valentine’s Day,” by writer Ibtisam Al-Saad — was published in the pro-government daily Al-Sharq.
The author lamented what she described as people adopting “Western customs and norms.”
“It’s a shame that, at a time when we see and hear that thousands of people in the West are becoming familiar with our Islam and tens of thousands of people are joining it every day … there are some among us who turn to Western nonsense and Western customs,” she wrote.
Al-Saad added: “I speak today of all these terrible contradictions while I see some stores and markets already putting in their windows red-colored ads for the so-called Valentine’s Day.”
Throughout the article, Al-Saad decries what she describes as “a competition” in the Arab world for “marking these silly occasions.”
“As I write, I am tiring myself out trying to count all the made-up ‘holidays’ (celebrated) in our Arab homeland, which we treat as historic occasions, giving them all our attention and making sure to mark them, as though there is a competition for marking these silly occasions and dragging the young people and teens to become preoccupied with these temptations and perversions.
“After Valentine’s Day there will be Mother’s Day and Halloween and Christmas and the madness of New Year’s Eve.”
She then moves on to what she called a “broader and more complex” issue during which she discusses how globalization has changed the local values and traditions.
Al-Saad called for a return to the “days of chastity” when women were dressed in long black abayas and lowered their gaze when a man passed by, and men lowered their gaze when they passed women.
“Arabness has turned into Westernization and religion has become (mere) tradition, so it’s no surprise that new holidays have joined our (old) ones,” she wrote.
