The Lord is Engaged
Columns
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER…
… on the occasion of the so-called “Wedding at Cana”
In March AD 30, Jesus turned 36 years of age, having been born in March 7 BC (there was no year 0: the transition proceeded straight from 1 BC to 1 AD, the AD era having begun with the birth of James the brother of Jesus, who unlike Jesus was born in the month of the year befitting of a dynastic heir, this being September).
Being a messianic heir, this was a significant date. A messianic heir (that is, the Davidic heir and the priestly heir) was supposed to be married between ages 36 and 40 at the most, the latter being referred to as a generation year. It was mandatory for the messianic heir to produce his own heir within this 4-year period.
The four-year window allowed for the odds of siring at least one son as girls did not inherit. It also allowed for ample testing of the woman’s fertility: if she could not produce a child within this period, the marriage was terminated by legal divorce.
STAGES OF THE MARRIAGE PROCESS
The Essenes, the religio-politico grouping to which Jesus belonged, had laid down very strict rules with respect to messianic heirs. Messianic heirs were never to indulge in sex for purposes of pleasure: it was for procreation only. Messianic heirs were therefore celibates in the grand scheme of things.
They were allowed to sleep with their wives only if the appointed time had arrived for them to produce a child. The time for both the marriage and the reproduction was strictly demarcated. First, there was a betrothal ceremony.
This took place between march and June. Then there was a First Marriage. This happened in September, the holiest month in the Jewish calendar. But the First Marriage did not permit a live-together: the couple only came under the same roof only in December, when intimate relations commenced with a view to conception on the part of the female spouse so that the child should be born in September the following year.
The First Marriage was also referred to as a trial marriage. Thus, if the female spouse did not conceive in December, copulation was suspended till the following December. The couple were to live separately all the while, though technically they were regarded as husband and wife from the day of betrothal.
If betrothal was to be terminated, it would require a formal divorce. A trial marriage was allowed for a maximum of three years, whereupon if the female spouse did not conceive, the marriage was annulled by way of divorce. Divorce was necessary because Essenes did not countenance the idea of polygamy.
On the other hand, if conception did take place in at least one December during the three-year trial marriage, a Second Marriage was held in March. By this time, the spouse was three months pregnant and as such, the chances of a miscarriage were very low.
After the Second Wedding, the union was final and irrevocable: divorce was forbidden as royal marriages were meant to last “till death do us part”. A messianic spouse therefore was always three months pregnant at the time of her second and therefore final wedding.
Although she was already pregnant, she was still referred to as a Virgin titularly. She only ceased to be called a Virgin at six months of pregnancy, that is, in June, when she now assumed the title of Mother. Resultantly, all Davidic spouses – Mary the Mother of Jesus; Mary Magdalene; and Mary-Cleopas, the wife of James the brother of Jesus, were all referred to as Mother Mary.
GROOM-ED FROM CHILDHOOD
The woman who had been earmarked for Jesus to wed was Mary, the daughter of Helena-Salome, a Gentile of renown from Syro-Phoenicia. In antiquity, a future king’s bride was chosen when she was practically a tiny tot. For example, Herod the Great had long chosen Herodias for his then favourite son and therefore heir apparent Herod Philip I, best known as the disciple Thomas in the gospels.
Typically, a dynastic bride was chosen from the immediate extended family so that King and Queen would be cousins or uncle and niece. In the case of Herodias, she was a niece to Thomas. But in a bid to cement diplomatic relations and therefore forestall the possibility of armed hostilities, a bride might be chosen from a foreign dynasty. A case in point is Herod Antipas, the tetrarch (quarter-king) of Galilee and Perea, whose first wife was Phasaelis, the daughter of King Aretas IV of Nabataea (modern-day Jordan).
In the case of Jesus, however, convention was flouted: he chose a commoner and a Gentile for that matter as his bride. This is one reason Mary Magdalene was so viscerally loathed by the apostles, particularly Simon Peter, Judas Iscariot, and Paul. His father Joseph, on the other hand, had loyally heeded convention by marrying a Hasmonean princess in his (Jesus’s) mother.
In truth, however, Mary Magdalene was neither a commoner nor a Gentile. She was royalty proper, far much more than any blue-blooded Jewish lass. Her real father was an Anunnaki and the Anunnaki were the gods of the Old Testament, which might explain why Helena gave her the name Mary, which meant “First Lady”, “First Princess”, or simply “Queen”.
Even in New Testament times, the Anunnaki were around but operated behind the scenes, from which they subtly and systematically charted the course of Earthly affairs. It was because Mary Magdalene had Anunnaki blood that Helena-Salome was unstinting in seeing to it that she married her off to the future King of Israel who was at once the future King of the world.
Jesus must have taken Mary Magdalene’s Anunnaki stock into account when he succumbed to Helena’s overtures to marry her. Beauty was not an irrelevant factor either: as half-human, half-Anunnaki, Mary Magdalene was white skinned, that is, a Caucasian, which enhanced her aesthetic appeal compared to the genetically dark-skinned Jews of the day.
To ensure Mary Magdalene met the grade as Jesus’s wife when she came of age, Helena put her in conventual sisterhood at Qumran from a very young age. The Essene convent into which she was placed was that of the Mary’s in the female order of Dan. Mary’s were groomed as future spouses for monarchs, princes, and other members of the nobility. The female head of the order of Dan was Mary the mother of Jesus. But overall, the Mary’s were overseen by men. Altogether, there were seven men who supervised them.
They all were Zealots but were metaphorically known as the Seven Demons or Seven Satans. “Demon” and “Satan” were alternative terms for Zealots, the military wing of the Essenes who sought to overthrow the Romans by force of arms but were neutralised by highly influential pacifists such as Jesus and John the Baptist.
The Seven Demons were headed by the Essenes’ Chief Scribe, who also went by the title Demon No. 7. In gospel times, Demon No. 7 was Judas Iscariot. Judas, whose other title was the Jairus, was therefore Mary Magdalene’s principal, another reason why she was also referred to as “Jairus’s daughter”.
Mary Magdalene was very rich in that her mother was wealthy. By tactfully and strategically inserting her into the order of Dan, it now meant she no longer was eligible to inherit her mother’s wealth as an individual. Whatever would be bequeathed to her would vest in the Essene fraternity as members of the order of Dan were not allowed to own individual property. But Helena didn’t mind the pauperish situation into which she had thrust her daughter. As the future Queen, Mary Magdalene would be even wealthier than her mother. When people said Helena was a schemer, it wasn’t simply a mere stereotype.
TURNING WATER INTO WINE
Yet if Jesus had to marry a Gentile, that Gentile had to be approved by the Father of the Essene community, the Pope. In AD 29, the Pope was John the Baptist. John, however, was a puritan. If Jesus was a Davidic messiah, there was simply no way he was going to be allowed to consort with a Gentile woman. Moreover, John and Jesus were at this time at loggerheads with each other, with the result that Jesus had broken away from John to form a rival party. John had in fact de-recognised Jesus as the Davidic messiah in favour of his younger brother James.
Since John the Baptist was not seeing eye to eye with his equally great cousin, Jesus decided to assume the role of priest-king at least for the purpose of his beloved Mary Magdalene. In doing so, he had the support of his principal associate Simon Zelotes, who was the foster father of Mary Magdalene.
Thus when Mary Magdalene came of age at 12 and underwent the Bar Mitzvah ceremony, Jesus performed another rite on her. He elevated her from figurative death (the unregenerated Gentile state) into the community of life (the Essene state in the sight of God). This initiation is recorded in MATTHEW 9:18-25 though it has been grossly misinterpreted as raising “Jairus’s daughter from the dead”.
As far as Jesus was concerned, this was no big deal as his notion of the Kingdom of God embraced Gentiles as much as it did Jews. In any case, even the great Jewish patriarchs of old had consorted with Gentiles. With the rite performed, Mary Magdalene was now not only admitted into the Jewish fold (“grafted onto Israel” as the apostle Paul would say) but she was also effectively unofficially engaged to Jesus, though official engagement required its own ceremony.
Jesus’s official betrothal to Mary Magdalene took place at “Cana”, which was a structure at Qumran where women and Gentles were allowed and where Mary the mother of Jesus was the Mother Superior of the female convent. The incident is related in JOHN 2:1-12.
Although, it is called a wedding, it was actually not: it was a sacred meal that preceded the betrothal. The bride and groom are not expressly mentioned. This was deliberate: somebody didn’t want to put it in no uncertain terms that the groom was Jesus and the bride was Mary Magdalene. But it is clear that a matrimonial ceremony involving a member of Jesus family is going on as his mother is clearly the hostess and Jesus himself takes centre stage.
The Essene betrothal custom was for there to be a formal host (as appears in the account), who would be in full charge as the Ruler of the Feast. Secondary authority rested only in the bridegroom and his mother, and this is entirely relevant for when the matter of the communion wine arose, Jesus’s mother said to the servants (JOHN 2:5), “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it”. No invited guest would have had any such right of command. It is plain, therefore, that Jesus and the bridegroom were one and the same.
The event is referred to as a wedding because betrothal was as binding as a marriage proper. It was in fact a dual ceremony. First, Jesus initiated a class of people who Essenes regarded as unclean into the “Drink of the Congregation”, which was a kind of communion.
These were married men, novices Gentiles, and all lay Jews. At such a ceremony, the unclean were not eligible to partake of the wine: they were restricted to a ritual bathing with water only (that’s why there were so many jars of water). Only already initiated Jewish celibates were allowed to drink wine.
Jesus, a radical reformist, would have none of that. To him, there was no longer a divide between the clean and the unclean. All were equal before the sight of God. Jesus therefore allowed the unclean to partake of the wine too. In Qumran language, the act of allowing unclean persons to drink wine at a communion was referred to as “turning water into wine.” This was called a “miracle” by virtue not of its wondrousness but of its strange, aberrational nature.
In such a Gentile-friendly setting, it is little wonder that Jesus decided to betroth the Gentile Mary Magdalene to underline that she too had been received into the exalted Jewish-Essene fold and was therefore worthy of his bride.
NEXT WEEK: THE NUPTIALS
Columns
THE KEY TO HAPPINESS
Speaking at a mental health breakfast seminar last week I emphasised to the HR managerial audience that you cannot yoga your way out of a toxic work culture. What I meant by that was that as HR practitioners we must avoid tending to look at the soft options to address mental health issues, distractions such as yoga and meditation. That’s like looking for your lost bunch of keys, then opening the front door with the spare under the mat. You’ve solved the immediate problem, but all the other keys are still missing. Don’t get me wrong; mindfulness practices, yoga exercise and taking time to smell the roses all have their place in mental wellness but it’s a bit like hacking away at the blight-ridden leaves of the tree instead of getting to the root cause of the problem.
Another point I stressed was that mental health at work shouldn’t be looked at from the individual lens – yet that’s what we do. We have counselling of employees, wellness webinars or talks but if you really want to sort out the mental health crisis that we face in our organisations you HAVE to view this more systemically and that means looking at the system and that starts with the leaders and managers.
Now. shining a light on management may not be welcomed by many. But leaders control the flow of work and set the goals and expectations that others need to live up to. Unrealistic expectations, excessive workloads and tight deadlines increase stress and force people to work longer hours … some of the things which contribute to poor mental health. Actually, we know from research exactly what contributes to a poor working environment – discrimination and inequality, excessive workloads, low job control and job insecurity – all of which pose a risk to mental health. The list goes on and is pretty exhaustive but here are the major ones: under-use of skills or being under-skilled for work; excessive workloads or work pace, understaffing; long, unsocial or inflexible hours; lack of control over job design or workload; organizational culture that enables negative behaviours; limited support from colleagues or authoritarian supervision; discrimination and exclusion; unclear job role; under- or over-promotion; job insecurity.
And to my point no amount of yoga is going to change that.
We can use the word ‘toxic’ to describe dysfunctional work environments and if our workplaces are toxic we have to look at the people who set the tone. Harder et al. (2014) define a toxic work environment as an environment that negatively impacts the viability of an organization. They specify: “It is reasonable to conclude that an organization can be considered toxic if it is ineffective as well as destructive to its employees”.
Micromanagement and/or failure to reward or recognize performance are the most obvious signs of toxic managers. These managers can be controlling, inflexible, rigid, close-minded, and lacking in self-awareness. And let’s face it managers like those I have just described are plentiful. Generally, however there is often a failure by higher management to address toxic leaders when they are considered to be high performing. This kind of situation can be one of the leading causes of unhappiness in teams. I have coached countless employees who talk about managers with bullying ways which everyone knows about, yet action is never taken. It’s problematic when we overlook unhealthy dynamics and behaviours because of high productivity or talent as it sends a clear message that the behaviour is acceptable and that others on the team will not be supported by leadership.
And how is the HR Manager viewed when they raise the unacceptable behaviour with the CEO – they are accused of not being a team player, looking for problems or failing to understand business dynamics and the need to get things done. Toxic management is a systemic problem caused when companies create cultures around high-performance and metrics vs. long-term, sustainable, healthy growth. In such instances the day-to-day dysfunction is often ignored for the sake of speed and output. While short-term gains are rewarded, executives fail to see the long-term impact of protecting a toxic, but high-performing, team or employee. Beyond this, managers promote unhealthy workplace behaviour when they recognize and reward high performers for going above and beyond, even when that means rewarding the road to burnout by praising a lack of professional boundaries (like working during their vacation and after hours).
The challenge for HR Managers is getting managers to be honest with themselves and their teams about the current work environment. Honesty is difficult, I’m afraid, especially with leaders who are overly sensitive, emotional, or cannot set healthy boundaries. But here’s the rub – no growth or change can occur if denial and defensiveness are used to protect egos. Being honest about these issues helps garner trust among employees, who already know the truth about what day-to-day dynamics are like at work. They will likely be grateful that cultural issues will finally be addressed. Conversely, if they aren’t addressed, retention failure is the cost of protecting egos of those in management.
Toxic workplace culture comes at a huge price: even before the Great Resignation, turnover related to toxic workplaces cost US employers almost $50 billion yearly! I wonder what it’s costing us here.
QUOTE
We can use the word ‘toxic’ to describe dysfunctional work environments and if our workplaces are toxic we have to look at the people who set the tone. Harder et al. (2014) define a toxic work environment as an environment that negatively impacts the viability of an organization. They specify: “It is reasonable to conclude that an organization can be considered toxic if it is ineffective as well as destructive to its employees”.
Columns
Heartache for Kelly Fisher
| T |
o date, Princess Diana, General Atiku, had destroyed one marriage, come close to ruining another one in the offing, and now was poised to wreck yet another marriage that was already in the making. This was between Dodi Fayed and the American model Kelly Fisher.
If there was one common denominator about Diana and Dodi besides their having been born with a silver spoon in their mouths, General, it was that both were divorcees. Dodi’s matrimonial saga, however, was less problematic and acrimonious and lasted an infinitesimal 8 months. This was with yet another American model and film actress going by the name Susanne Gregard.
Dodi met Susanne in 1986, when she was only 26 years old. Like most glamourous women, she proved not to be that easy a catch and to readily incline her towards positively and expeditiously responding to his rather gallant advances, Dodi booked her as a model for the Fayed’s London mega store Harrods, where he had her travel every weekend by Concorde. They married at a rather private ceremony at Dodi’s Colorado residence in 1987 on New Year’s Day, without the blessings, bizarrely, of his all-powerful father. By September the same year, the marriage was, for reasons that were not publicised but likely due to the fact that his father had not sanctioned it, kaput.
It would take ten more years for Dodi to propose marriage to another woman, who happened to be Kelly Fisher this time around.
DODI HITCHES KELLY FISHER
Kelly and Dodi, General, met in Paris in July 1996, when Kelly was only 29 years old. In a sort of whirlwind romance, the duo fell in love, becoming a concretised item in December and formally getting engaged in February 1997.
Of course the relationship was not only about mutual love: the material element was a significant, if not vital, factor. Kelly was to give up her modelling job just so she could spend a lot more time with the new man in her life and for that she was to be handed out a compensatory reward amounting to $500,000. The engagement ring for one, which was a diamond and sapphire affair, set back Dodi in the order of $230,000. Once they had wedded, on August 9 that very year as per plan, they were to live in a $7 million 5-acre Malibu Beach mansion in California, which Dodi’s father had bought him for that and an entrepreneurial purpose. They were already even talking about embarking on making a family from the get-go: according to Kelly, Dodi wanted two boys at the very least.
Kelly naturally had the unambiguous blessings of her father-in-law as there was utterly nothing Dodi could do without the green light from the old man. When Mohamed Al Fayed was contemplating buying the Jonikal, the luxurious yacht, he invited Dodi and Kelly to inspect it too and hear their take on it.
If there was a tell-tale red flag about Dodi ab initio, General, it had to do with a $200,000 cheque he issued to Kelly as part payment of the pledged $500,000 and which was dishonoured by the bank. Throughout their 13-month-long romance, Dodi made good on only $60,000 of the promised sum. But love, as they say, General, is blind and Kelly did not care a jot about her beau’s financial indiscretions. It was enough that he was potentially a very wealthy man anyway being heir to his father’s humongous fortune.
KELLY CONSIGNED TO “BOAT CAGE”
In that summer of the year 1997, General, Dodi and Kelly were to while away quality time on the French Rivierra as well as the Jonikal after Paris. Then Dodi’s dad weighed in and put a damper on this prospect in a telephone call to Dodi on July 14. “Dodi said he was going to London and he’d be back and then we were going to San Tropez,” Kelly told the interviewer in a later TV programme. “That evening he didn’t call me and I finally got him on his portable phone. I said, ‘Dodi where are you?’ and he said he was in London. I said, ‘Ok, I’ll call you right back at your apartment’. He said, ‘No, no, don’t call me back’. So I said, ‘Dodi where are you?’ and he admitted he was in the south of France. His father had asked him to come down and not bring me, I know now.”
Since Dodi could no longer hide from Kelly and she on her part just could not desist from badgering him, he had no option but to dispatch a private Fayed jet to pick her up so that she join him forthwith in St. Tropez. This was on July 16.
Arriving in St. Tropez, Kelly, General, did not lodge at the Fayed’s seaside villa as was her expectation but was somewhat stashed in the Fayed’s maritime fleet, first in the Sakara, and later in the Cujo, which was moored only yards from the Fayed villa. It was in the Cujo Kelly spent the next two nights with Dodi. “She (Kelly) felt there was something strange going on as Dodi spent large parts of the day at the family’s villa, Castel St. Helene, but asked her to stay on the boat,” writes Martyn Gregory in The Diana Conspiracy Exposed. “Dodi was sleeping with Kelly at night and was courting Diana by day. His deception was assisted by Kelly Fisher’s modelling assignment on 18-20 July in Nice. The Fayed’s were happy to lend her the Cujo and its crew for three days to take her there.”
Dodi’s behaviour clearly was curious, General. “Dodi would say, ‘I’m going to the house and I’ll be back in half an hour’,” Kelly told Gregory. “And he’d come back three or four hours later. I was furious. I’m sitting on the boat, stuck. And he was having lunch with everyone. So he had me in my little boat cage, and I now know he was seducing Diana. So he had me, and then he would go and try and seduce her, and then he’d come back the next day and it would happen again. I was livid by this point, and I just didn’t understand what was going on. When he was with me, he was so wonderful. He said he loved me, and we talked to my mother, and we were talking about moving into the house in California.”
But as is typical of the rather romantically gullible tenderer sex, General, Kelly rationalised her man’s stratagems. “I just thought they maybe didn’t want a commoner around the Princess … Dodi kept leaving me behind with the excuse that the Princess didn’t like to meet new people.” During one of those nights, General, Dodi even had unprotected sexual relations with Kelly whilst cooing in her ear that, “I love you so much and I want you to have my baby.”
KELLY USHERED ONTO THE JONIKAL AT LONG LAST
On July 20, General, Diana returned to England and it was only then that Dodi allowed Kelly to come aboard the Jonikal. According to Debbie Gribble, who was the Jonikal’s chief stewardess, Kelly was kind of grumpy. “I had no idea at the time who she was, but I felt she acted very spoiled,” she says in Trevor Rees-Jones’ The Bodyguard’s Story. “I remember vividly that she snapped, ‘I want to eat right now. I don’t want a drink, I just want to eat now’. It was quite obvious that she was upset, angry or annoyed about something.”
Kelly’s irascible manner of course was understandable, General, given the games Dodi had been playing with her since she pitched up in St. Tropez. Granted, what happened to Kelly was very much antithetical to Dodi’s typically well-mannered nature, but the fact of the matter was that she simply was peripheral to the larger agenda, of which Dodi’s father was the one calling the shots.
On July 23, Dodi and Kelly flew to Paris, where they parted as Kelly had some engagements lined up in Los Angeles. Dodi promised to join her there on August 4 to celebrate with her her parents’ marriage anniversary. Dodi, however, General, did not make good on his promise: though he did candidly own up to the fact that he was at that point in time again with Diana, he also fibbed that he was not alone with her but was partying with her along with Elton John and George Michael. But in a August 6 phone call, he did undertake to Kelly that he would be joining her in LA in a few days’ time. In the event, anyway, General, Kelly continued to ready herself for her big day, which was slated for August 9 – until she saw “The Kiss”.
THE KISS THAT NEVER WAS
“The Kiss”, General, first featured in London’s Sunday Mirror on August 10 under that very headline. In truth, General, it was not a definitive, point-blank kiss: it was a fuzzy image of Diana and Dodi embracing on the Jonikal. A friend of Kelly faxed her the newspaper pictures in the middle of the night and Kelly was at once stunned and convulsed with rage.
But although Kelly was shocked, General, she was not exactly surprised as two or three days prior, British tabloids had already begun rhapsodising on a brewing love affair between Dodi and Diana. That day, Kelly had picked up a phone to demand an immediate explanation from her fiancé. “I started calling him in London because at this time I was expecting his arrival in a day. I called his private line, but there was no answer. So then I called the secretary and asked to speak to him she wouldn’t put me on. So Mohamed got on and in so many horrible words told me to never call back again. I said, ‘He’s my fiancé, what are you talking about?’ He hung up on me and I called back and the secretary said don’t ever call here again, your calls are no longer to be put through. It was so horrible.”
Kelly did at long last manage to reach Dodi but he was quick to protest that, “I can’t talk to you on the phone. I will talk to you in LA.” Perhaps Dodi, General, just at that stage was unable to muster sufficient Dutch courage to thrash out the matter with Kelly but a more credible reason he would not talk had to do with his father’s obsessive bugging of every communication device Dodi used and every inch of every property he owned. The following is what David Icke has to say on the subject in his iconic book The Biggest Secret:
“Ironically, Diana used to have Kensington Palace swept for listening devices and now she was in the clutches of a man for whom bugging was an obsession. The Al Fayed villa in San Tropez was bugged, as were all Fayed properties. Everything Diana said could be heard. Bob Loftus, the former Head of Security at Harrods, said that the bugging there was ‘a very extensive operation’ and was also always under the direction of Al Fayed. Henry Porter, the London Editor of the magazine Vanity Fair, had spent two years investigating Al Fayed and he said they came across his almost obsessive use of eavesdropping devices to tape telephone calls, bug rooms, and film people.”
Through mutual friends, General, Porter warned Diana about Al Fayed’s background and activities ‘because we thought this was quite dangerous for her for obvious reasons’ but Diana apparently felt she could handle it and although she knew Al Fayed could ‘sometimes be a rogue’, he was no threat to her, she thought. “He is rather more than a rogue and rather more often than ‘sometimes,” she apparently told friends. “I know he’s naughty, but that’s all.” The TV programme Dispatches said they had written evidence that Al Fayed bugged the Ritz Hotel and given his background and the deals that are hatched at the Ritz, it would be uncharacteristic if he did not. Kelly Fisher said that the whole time she was on Fayed property, she just assumed everything was bugged. It was known, she said, and Dodi had told her the bugging was so pervasive.
KELLY SUES, ALBEIT VAINLY SO
To his credit, General, Dodi was sufficiently concerned about what had transpired in St. Tropez to fly to LA and do his utmost to appease Kelly but Kelly simply was not interested as to her it was obvious enough that Diana was the new woman in his life.
On August 14, Kelly held a press conference in LA, where she announced that she was taking legal action against Dodi for breach of matrimonial contract. Her asking compensation price was £340,000. Of course the suit, General, lapsed automatically with the demise of Dodi in that Paris underpass on August 31, 1997.
Although Kelly did produce evidence of her engagement to Dodi in the form of a pricey and spectacular engagement ring, General, Mohamed Al Fayed was adamant that she never was engaged to his son and that she was no more than a gold digger.
But it is all water under the bridge now, General: Kelly is happily married to a pilot and the couple has a daughter. Her hubby may not be half as rich as Dodi potentially was but she is fully fulfilled anyway. Happiness, General, comes in all shades and does not necessarily stem from a colossal bank balance or other such trappings of affluence.
Pic Cap
THE SHORT-LIVED TRIANGLE: For about a month or so, Dodi Al Fayed juggled Princess Diana and American model Kelly Fisher, who sported Dodi’s engagement ring. Of course one of the two had to give and naturally it could not be Diana, who entered the lists in the eleventh hour but was the more precious by virtue of her royal pedigree and surpassing international stature.
NEXT WEEK: FURTHER BONDING BETWEEN DIANA AND DODI
Columns
EXTRAVAGANCE One of The Scourges in Society.
Extravagance in recent times has moved from being the practice of some rich and wealthy people of society in general and has regrettably, filtered to all levels of the society. Some of those who have the means are reckless and flaunt their wealth, and consequently, those of us who do not, borrow money to squander it in order to meet their families’ wants of luxuries and unnecessary items. Unfortunately this is a characteristic of human nature.
Adding to those feelings of inadequacy we have countless commercials to whet the consumer’s appetite/desire to buy whatever is advertised, and make him believe that if he does not have those products he will be unhappy, ineffective, worthless and out of tune with the fashion and trend of the times. This practice has reached a stage where many a bread winner resorts to taking loans (from cash loans or banks) with high rates of interest, putting himself in unnecessary debt to buy among other things, furniture, means of transport, dress, food and fancy accommodation, – just to win peoples’ admiration.
Islam and most religions discourage their followers towards wanton consumption. They encourage them to live a life of moderation and to dispense with luxury items so they will not be enslaved by them. Many people today blindly and irresponsibly abandon themselves to excesses and the squandering of wealth in order to ‘keep up with the Joneses’.
The Qur’aan makes it clear that allowing free rein to extravagance and exceeding the limits of moderation is an inherent characteristic in man. Allah says, “If Allah were to enlarge the provision for his servants, they would indeed transgress beyond all bounds.” [Holy Qur’aan 42: 27]
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said, “Observe the middle course whereby you will attain your objective (that is paradise).” – Moderation is the opposite of extravagance.
Every individual is meant to earn in a dignified manner and then spend in a very wise and careful manner. One should never try to impress upon others by living beyond one’s means. Extravagance is forbidden in Islam, Allah says, “Do not be extravagant; surely He does not love those who are extravagant!” [Holy Qur’aan 7: 31]
The Qur’aan regards wasteful buying of food, extravagant eating that sometimes leads to throwing away of leftovers as absolutely forbidden. Allah says, “Eat of the fruits in their season, but render the dues that are proper on the day that the harvest is gathered. And waste not by excess, for Allah loves not the wasters.” [Holy Qur’aan 6: 141]
Demonstrating wastefulness in dress, means of transport, furniture and any other thing is also forbidden. Allah says, “O children of Adam! Wear your apparel of adornment at every time and place of worship, and eat and drink but do not be extravagant; surely He does not love those who are extravagant!” [Holy Qur’aan 7: 31]
Yet extravagance and the squandering of wealth continue to grow in society, while there are many helpless and deprived peoples who have no food or shelter. Just look around you here in Botswana.
Have you noticed how people squander their wealth on ‘must have’ things like designer label clothes, fancy brand whiskey, fancy top of the range cars, fancy society parties or even costly weddings, just to make a statement? How can we prevent the squandering of such wealth?
How can one go on spending in a reckless manner possibly even on things that have been made forbidden while witnessing the suffering of fellow humans whereby thousands of people starve to death each year. Islam has not forbidden a person to acquire wealth, make it grow and make use of it. In fact Islam encourages one to do so. It is resorting to forbidden ways to acquiring and of squandering that wealth that Islam has clearly declared forbidden. On the Day of Judgment every individual will be asked about his wealth, where he obtained it and how he spent it.
In fact, those who do not have any conscience about their wasteful habits may one day be subjected to Allah’s punishment that may deprive them of such wealth overnight and impoverish them. Many a family has been brought to the brink of poverty after leading a life of affluence. Similarly, many nations have lived a life of extravagance and their people indulged in such excesses only to be later inflicted by trials and tribulations to such a point that they wished they would only have a little of what they used to possess!
With the festive season and the new year holidays having passed us, for many of us meant ‘one’ thing – spend, spend, spend. With the festivities and the celebrations over only then will the reality set in for many of us that we have overspent, deep in debt with nothing to show for it and that the following months are going to be challenging ones.
Therefore, we should not exceed the bounds when Almighty bestows His bounties upon us. Rather we should show gratefulness to Him by using His bestowments and favours in ways that prove our total obedience to Him and by observing moderation in spending. For this will be better for us in this life and the hereafter.