1) Young Muslims - The Message

would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. To avoid beingrecognized by these ghosts, people would wear masks when theyleft their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake themfor fellow spirits. On Halloween, to keep ghosts away from theirhouses, people would place bowls of food outside their homes toappease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter.VALENTINE'S DAYHistory and Islamic PerspectiveWhat is it and where did it come from?Consider Valentine's Day, a day that after dying out a well deserveddeath in most of Europe (but surviving in Britain and United States)has suddenly started to emerge across a good swath of Muslimcountries. Who was Valentine? Why is this day observed? Legendsabound, as they do in all such cases, but this much is clear:Valentine's Day began as a pagan ritual started by Romans in the4th century BCE to honor the god Lupercus. The main attraction ofthis ritual was a lottery held to distribute young women to youngmen for "entertainment and pleasure"--until the next year's lottery.Among other equally despicable practices associated with this daywas the lashing of young women by two young men, clad only in abit of goatskin and wielding goatskin thongs, who had beensmeared with blood of sacrificial goats and dogs. A lash of the"sacred" thongs by these "holy men" was believed to make thembetter able to bear children.As usual, Christianity tried, without success, to stop the evilcelebration of Lupercalia. It first replaced the lottery of the namesof women with a lottery of the names of the saints. The idea wasthat during the following year the young men would emulate thelife of the saint whose name they had drawn. (The idea that you canpreserve the appearance of a popular evil and yet somehow turn itto serve the purpose of virtue, has survived. Look at all thoseYoung Muslims, What they should know about Islam Page - 230