Coexisting at Christmas

Muslim Turkish FlagLast weekend, my wife and I determined it was time to get a new tree topper for our Christmas tree. For years, we had an angel tree topper, but we wanted to change things up with a star this year.

So, we braved the post-Black Friday rush to check out the options available at some of our local retailers.

We eventually wound up at a Walmart store. Wandering through the Christmas décor section, we found the products we wanted to shop, as well as one we really never imagined we would see – ever.

Nestled among the stars, angels, Santas, and those pointy things (does anyone know what those things are even called?), I found a crescent moon with a star. Not a happy, smiling, man-in-the-moon crescent moon … no, this was a crescent-and-star ornament that could only symbolize one religion: Islam.

I was blown away.

I didn’t have a camera with me at the time, so I wondered, if I said anything, if it would quickly be relegated to urban legend status. It was almost too absurd to be believed without some kind of visual confirmation. Thankfully, I wasn’t the only person who saw these ornaments on the shelf.

Bryan Lisitsin of The Czar Report spotted one on the shelf at a Walmart back in October, and snapped a photo he shared on Twitter.

“First off, it was October. I was shocked to see Christmas stuff before Halloween,” he said. “When I saw the tree topper, I was taken aback by it. I have known Muslims to celebrate Christmas as Christians do. I took the pic because I have never seen this tree topper before and wanted to see if anybody else was seeing the same thing where they lived.”

Lisitsin lives in a sparsely populated county of less than 6,000 people in east-central California. He said he’s not aware of any large, or even vocal, Muslim population in the area.

“I have shopped at this Walmart for 10-plus years and this was a first for me,” he said. “Sign of the times, maybe, who knows?”

I’m still left wondering, though, what purpose these ornaments could possibly serve. Who in their right mind would even put such a thing on their Christmas tree? Was it really meant for a Coexister? If so, how would that even work?

That line of questioning really set my mind to work …

 

Commercial Narrator: Nothing says “Ramahanukwanzmas” quite like your very own Coexistence Shrub, and no progressive family can truly celebrate the “happy holidays” without the Ambiguously Islamic Shrub Topper. No more passive-aggressive liberal-socialist-progressive-statist brow beating at your winter party this year. Get the Ambiguously Islamic Shrub Topper today!

 

Yeah, OK. Like that would ever happen.

So, if it’s not meant for Coexisters, maybe it was meant for Muslims, right? I mean, we’ve been hearing for months about more and more major corporations who have begun to cater directly to the Islamic minority. In fact, just last month, a number of outlets reported that Walmart was beginning to offer “halal” foods.

But a Christmas tree topper for Muslims? Not likely. You see, putting up a Christmas tree, even if a Muslim is not celebrating Christmas, is considered “haram” (forbidden) under Islamic teaching. There is no “peaceful coexistence” for Muslims and the “kuffar” (the derogatory term for Bible-believing Christians and Jews) or the “zalimoon” (the derogatory term for Coexisters).

Directly from the Quran (5:51):

 

O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you – then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people.

 

Coexisters like Pope Francis would do well to learn this lesson. As for Walmart, I can only imagine someone in the buying department made a really, really bad business decision.