In Iraq this year, the holy month of Ramadan was foreordained in such a way that Sunnis and Shiites began fasting on the same day. Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the takeover of power by Shiite parties, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual leader of Shiism in Iraq, had decreed that the country?s majority sect should commence fasting one day earlier or later than the minority Sunnis.
But on August 21, 2009, Sistani?s office ordered that Shiites should synchronise Ramadan observance with Sunnis. It was a calculated gesture to forge goodwill between Iraq?s estranged sects and bolster nation-building that has been marred by deadly violence. But when Ramadan wound up last week, old sectarian politics resurfaced on the question of when the festival of Eid al-Fitr should be celebrated.
Sistani?s establishment decreed on September 20 that Eid festivi-ties would begin for Shiites on the 21 even as Sunnis ended fasting a day earlier. The followers of the Shiite militant cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, criticised Sistani?s overturning of what looked like a hopeful precedent and lamented that the supreme patriarch had ?spoiled? a rare occasion when Sunnis and Shiites could embrace each other and jointly partake in Eid gaiety.
Logically, if fasting began the same day for both, the partying at the conclusion should have also been common. But such are the political uncertainties in the regimented Arab world that festivals which go back in history to more than a thousand years can be whimsically doctored or customised by mullahs with oversized social control.
Even Christmas, the putative birthday of Jesus Christ, has politicised origins. The consensus among most Christian theologians is that Christ was actually born in the month of September. However, the date of December 25th emerged as a faux birthday for the messiah apparently due to the politicking of imperial Rome.
In the third century AD, Emperor Aurelian unveiled an official state-sanctioned sun god called Sol and designated December 25th as his birthday. The pagan feasting and rituals enforced by Roman state power on that day lingered until Theodosius the Great made Christianity the sole legitimate imperial religion in AD 380. Sometime after that, it is said that the early church adopted this holiday and gave it a new Christian significance.
The key here was the continued pull of pagan beliefs and cults among people across the Roman Empire even though the sovereign embraced Christianity. The state-backed church performed a smart operation by absorbing the sun god?s followers into the fold of ?true believers?. Christ got a fake birthday courtesy the needs of imperialism, and yuletide universally came to revolve around December 25th.
Like Islam, Christianity has borne the brunt of inter-sectarian civil violence since the Reformation of the 16th century. Its last major remnant wrecked Northern Ireland between 1960 and 1998, when Protestant and Catholic paramilitaries and British security forces engaged in hostilities to decide the political future of a torn territory.
One of the interesting innovations of the Northern Irish war was the invention of sectarian festivals that escalate tensions and whip up ?us? vs ?them? thinking.
The Orange Order marches of July 12 have for two centuries been the cause of riots and ugly confrontations between the sects, as Protestants attempt to provoke Catholics by romping through their neighbourhoods in aggressive pomp and regalia.
After the Good Friday agreements formally ended the conflict known as ?The Troubles?, militant Orangemen did not forsake the marching and simply rechristened it as ?Orangefest?. They toned down some of the overt anti-Catholic vitriol by framing the event as a ?family-friendly pageant? and a ?kaleidoscope of culture and colour?.
But this festival has turned out to be barrier-reinforcing rather than bridge-building. Its gory past and the continued exclusivity afforded only to Protestant participants have not gone down well in the Catholic community. The symbolic attachment of Orangemen to Britishness and its open flaunting in such festivals only sours the air, much like riotous mobs of Hindus and Muslims taking out noisy processions in front of each others? places of worships in India. The spark for communal riots is often lit when festivals are exploited to humiliate or outrage so-called enemy faiths.
When it comes to ingenious coinage of festivals for political advantage, the late Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka were one up on the Irish. A secular secessionist movement of largely Hindu Tamils that had many Christians in its ranks, the LTTE confected a hitherto unheard-of festival called ?Pongu Tamil? to rally constituents of different religious persuasions to separatism and to raise funds. In the LTTE?s heyday, this make-believe festival attracted hundreds of thousands of Tiger ?devotees? to their own ?sun god?, Velupillai Prabhakaran.
Of late, the politics of terrorism has intruded into festivals around the world due to the dense concentration of potential victims in designated spaces during auspicious periods and the religious hatred that can be multiplied by carrying out attacks on soft targets on a holy day. As religious festivals are markers of identity and oneness within a community, a blow struck on or around the day of a festival is guaranteed to incite hotheads into retaliatory violence. This principle of choosing festivals for mayhem has been applied worldwide by ethnic and religious entrepreneurs wishing to set haystacks on fire.
The more likeable entrepreneurs who sell goods and commodities for profit are, of course, also in business during festivals. Since giving and receiving gifts is the socialising crux of festivals, retail sales get huge uplifts in the carnival season. Some cynics even accuse the greetings and stationery industry of concocting special ?Days? and festivals to boost their sales.
In general though, everybody (including the spoiler) loves a good f?te because it serves each individual?s mundane interests while reminding society of a higher purpose.
The author is associate professor of world politics at the Jindal Global Law School