Thoughts on “Thanksgiving”

As readers may be aware, "Thanksgiving" as it’s celebrated today has little or nothing to do with its historical reality. For time immemorial, Native people held feasts to give thanks to the Creator for all they had. So, the claim that the first Thanksgiving occurred only after the colonists arrived, is a racist statement from the outset, writing off Native celebrations. It is akin to saying that 9-11 was the first terror event on U.S. soil—never mind the many massacres of Native people, and lynchings of Black people. As the link at the end of this piece illustrates, the precise date of the first Thanksgiving was not 1621, as is claimed. It is unknown. However, numerous colonist-initiated thanksgiving celebrations were held in the Northeastern U.S. (in the area now known as New England), usually following a massacre of native people.

Among the more well-known of these was the “Thanksgiving” which followed the massacre of Wampanoag people (Native American--or Red Indian, per the Indo-Pakistani misnomer--tribe) and the butchering of their leader Metacomet (known to the Whites as King Phillip), his head hung from the village square by the colonists. Plymouth Colony then called for a day of thanksgiving for their “victory” over the Native people. The perfidy of the incident is particularly horrifying when one considers that Metacomet's father, Massasoit, had only a generation earlier hosted the White settlers who landed near Plymouth Rock, saving them from famine.

As Muslims, we are often in the difficult position of having to respond to a greeting such as "Happy Thanksgiving." Some Muslims feel that it necessary to return the greeting out of concern for adaab (Islamic etiquette), or to be in compliance with the Qur'anic injunction to return a greeting with one better.

But words are powerful. They are essential in the colonizing of minds. And they can help perpetuate a myth, in this case, that of a warm fuzzy Thanksgiving, in which Native people and White settlers feasted and cavorted in friendship. But Islam teaches us to stand with the oppressed, against the oppressor. As aware Muslims we have the option to politely deflect the greeting, then briefly explain why we do not celebrate it. It is an opportunity to educate people, and bust some myths.

It's odd how sensitivities of some groups in society are paramount, while others are completely disregarded. Why, for example, don't people who embrace "Thanksgiving" consider how a Native person would feel on an occasion commemorating the massacre of his ancestors? Carrying this point further, why is there not a public furor at such a celebration? In my opinion, there should be.

I’m almost certain a furor would result, if, for instance, there were a festive holiday commemorating/coinciding with the deaths of Europeans (this would be nothing more far fetched than what occurs on Thanksgiving). On the other hand, the near coincidence of Eid ul-Fitr—determined by the moon, not an invention of individual Muslims—with September 11 was a cause for major brouhaha (not to intimate that all the victims of that sad event were Caucasian, or that suffering did not occur on that occasion). But Thanksgiving—despite the fact that its celebrations throughout U.S. colonial history were nearly always announced or correlated with a massacre of Native people—seems to raise no such concern. This is part of the dehumanizing of Red, Black, and Brown Peoples, that their graves may be trampled upon at will, their genocide mythologized into national celebrations. So, clearly the desensitization alluded to earlier has been effective across broad sectors of the society.

Finally, the crushing of public sensitivities to a targeted population (in this case Native people) is a crucial part of a propaganda war, which allows their genocide to be perpetuated, or at least not redressed. It is up to us to decide if we wish to participate.

With thanks to L.C. for this valuable link:

http://oyate.org/resources/shortthanks.html