Rights activists lashed out Friday at local officials who allowed hundreds of infants to be dropped from the roof of a mosque in western India in the belief that the fall — which ends when the babies are caught in a bedsheet — would ensure good health and prosperity for their families. The ritual at the Baba Umer Durga, a Muslim shrine, is believed to have been followed for nearly 700 years, and each year hundreds of people, both Hindus and Muslims, take part in the ritual.There are so many things about this I don't get, starting with the way they shake the babies before they drop them. I mean, I can see tossing your baby into a waiting blanket below, but everyone knows you're not supposed to shake them, right?
Friday, July 31, 2009
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Muslim and Hindu babies are shaken, not Kurds.
LAWL
Thank God my parents had the good religious sense just to hold me under water to ensure my spiritual prosperity instead of this horrific tradition!
Also, not so good...
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_2256263,00.html
There is also so much here that is just wrong and unfair. For example, there is the "International Muslim Matrimonial Site" ad that accompanies this post.
Then there is the fact that God, or Allah, or some Schmuck whose rules I don't want to follow, has intervened to take the Michael Jackson joke from me.
Oh just drop it. I am not falling for any more of your downer jokes. After all, you never appreciate the gravity of an article anyway.
And gravity is essential to this one!
Yes, the ad is really startling. A keyword buy run very far amok.
This is just a guess, but maybe the wiggling the arms and legs thing sets off some kind of reflex in the baby so it spread-eagles and therefore falls without tumbling? Anyway, given a choice of babysitters, I'd take the Baba Umer Durga over Jenny McCarthy every time.
I assume the blanket used to catch the babies was washed in Dreft beforehand? Because, you know, regular detergent is too strong for babies' sensitive skin.
Ha. I recently learned of the Dreft. (Target sells a great off-brand BTW). Also, yes, it is probably washed in the Dreft that seeps into their river from the Dreft factory nearby.
This is a fairly common ritual at my place. Only I use it to tenderize a brisket.