scaramouche

Thursday, 25 September 2008

Belly-aching: When they were poor, they were thin and sassy. Not that they’re awash in oil lucre—and lots of American fast food joints—their bellies are spreading faster than sharia financing in the West. And don’t get me started on what they go through during Ramadan: it’s brutal. The Globe and Mail’s Mark “Malarkey” MacKinnon has all the gruesome details:

MANAMA — Each evening, as the invariably hot yellow sun dips into the azure waters of the Persian Gulf, a warbling call rises from hundreds of mosques across this tiny island kingdom. Come pray, the muezzins sing, and celebrate the holy month of Ramadan.

More often than not, the appeal is drowned out by a more pressing one – a plaintive “let's eat”– emitted by the stomachs, and children, of those Muslims who've spent the day fasting. Instead of the mosque, many head straight to the nearest buffet table.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan, with its dawn-to-dusk fasting, sounds like the ultimate crash diet. But in Bahrain, and across this deeply devout region, day-long abstinence is followed each night by binge eating that contributes to one of the world's fastest-growing obesity crises.

More than 60 per cent of the just over one million people who live on this island are either overweight or obese, according to government statistics, meaning that Bahrainis – slim and fit as nation just a few scant decades ago – are now slightly more likely to be overweight than Canadians. Bahraini bellies are now nearly on par with notoriously ballooning beltlines in the United States.

Gulf Arabs from Kuwait to Dubai to Saudi Arabia, all countries that had thin and active populations 30 years ago, are now stereotyped by their neighbours as idle and overweight. Call it the curse of affluence: As their oil-based economies boomed and their societies became richer, Gulf Arabs adopted more sedentary lifestyles and fattier diets heavily laced with the Western fast food that they've come to crave.

Matters only get worse each year during Ramadan, a period during which patience and sacrifice are supposed to be paramount as Muslims mark the time when the Koran was revealed by God. Health-care professionals here say many Bahrainis routinely gain five to 10 pounds during the month, much of it due to oversized iftar (Arabic for “breaking the fast”) meals.

“It should be a good chance to lose weight, but it's the opposite. People eat like hell – they feast like animals once they're done fasting,” laughed Khalifa Bin Dayna, himself sporting a bit of a Ramadan belly two weeks into the holy month. He said that while it was traditional for Muslims to end the fast with light foods such as soup, yogurt and dates, many now chomp straight into the main courses – red meats and deep-fried foods such as falafel – as soon as the sun sets…

So much for “self-sacrifice” in the name of enlarging the spirit. Could it be that creeping Dairy Queens and the like imperil Dar al-Islam in the same way creeping sharia imperils the West?

Funny how, in the affluent West, obesity is a trait of the poor, not the rich. The rich people are either starving themselves so they can fit into size 0 (in People Magazine, Desperate Housewife Eva Longoria is chided for her weight gain; "fat" Eva has gone up to that size from a 00), or getting their meals sent in from one of those South Beach Diet-type caterers.

posted by: scaramouche at 11:12 | link | comments (3) |

Comments:

#1 25 September 2008 - 13:39

Come pray, the muezzins sing, and celebrate the holy month of Ramadan.

Disingenuous bollocks. The muezzin screeching the adhan is actually making an unequivocal statement of Islamic theological supremacy:

Ash-hadu an la ilaha ill-Allah.
There is no god but Allah.

Trust MacKinnon to gloss over this important point.

Mo'nonymous

#2 25 September 2008 - 13:41

They (or rather, I) don't call him Malarkey for nothing.