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So I grew up in a rather religious Muslim family and I remember my family being pretty superstitious about certain things and had some strange beliefs. Even as a child I used to question religion and these odd beliefs but now as an adult I find them laughable. For example, if you left a show upside down it was disrespectful to allah, you had to cover a glass of water overnight otherwise Satan would piss in it, you had to put away or turn in a corner of your prayer mat otherwise Satan would pray on your mat, you had to throw away or flesh your fingernail clippings or on the day of judgement you'd have to pick them up with your eyelids, etc, lol. So, I'm curious to know if any of you guys grew up with weird stuff like this too?

Andromeda32 5 Sep 27
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8

Now that is some weird shit there.

4

I am soooo leaving my prayer mat out tonight! Does satan piss have magic properties? I'd try it once.

Only if he pees in the direction of Mecca! 😉

3

One of our former supreme court justices thought that satan was embodied and walking among us.

I was raised by atheists, but my germophobe father had some strange ideas about germs travelling all over our bodies. I was happy to take microbiology in college and be able to let him know how he was wrong

3

As a child we always avoided stepping on any distressed areas of pavement that showed wear. We believed that placing our feet on the fissures would cause serious spinal injury to our mothers.

Step on a crack and you....

I am with you.

Indeed, and this practice extends to any line ... watch how often baseball managers avoid stepping on the chalk baseline when visiting the mound! Baseball might be viewed as a religion with all its superstitions!

2

It's kinda interesting to understand how religion started of in the first place......It could have some connections to early superstitous beliefs that people held cause they couldnt explain the cause and effect of some situations and then just grew into a way to control the masses and accumulate power. maybe there is some connections to local superstitious beliefs to our very distant ancestors and they were just passed on for generations.....when I was growing up my mum wouldn't let me have a dog at home cause she believed the dogs kept the angels from entering the house due to their barking.

Sounds like a good argument for a dog.

1

I'm just glad you could see sense.

Ells Level 3 Nov 15, 2018
1

I haven't heard of all of these, but I don't find them that surprising. After living in the UAE and being open to learning about Islam. I have found that the religion has a lot of rules that sound crazy to a Western person but we're really quite practical if you were a person living in the times and places where the religion began. Some of these sound like things a parent would say to get you to clean up after yourself.
Some of the clean unclean ones like what hand to use to eat or wipe your butt, unclean animals, washing your hands and feet five times a day, these are all good things to do/don't if you live in a place with a lack of sanitary knowledge.
Hey the shoe one is probably so a scorpion or spider doesn't get in your shoe.

1

ahhhhh ... superstitions of the Muslim religion ... u must agree , as a woman , the least of your concerns . ?

The Muslim faith has no special claim to intolerance for women's rights. Look into fundamentalist Christian and Jewish beliefs also.

@Mitch07102 that was the point I am afraid .

@Mitch07102 Not only the "fundamentalist" beliefs! There are a few female Rabbis but where is the female Pope? Pedofile vaticani gangsters!

1

Spill some salt, immediately throw some over your left shoulder--or you'll have bad luck or something. Nothing there to do with religion, as far as I could tell. No idea about that one, really.

Just stupid folkloric reactionary rites like that. I can't even remember others. We just did them because other people did them. I was always unimpressed with that manner of transmission of traditions, so I'm not surprised I can't remember the others.

the throwing of salt over your left shoulder was so that it landed in Satan's eye and somehow he didnt see that you had spilt salt -which at one time would have been a rare and precious commodity

@Hercules3000 strangely I know this 🙂 weird how you remember this rubbish. He (satan)was looking over your left shoulder because God was looking over your right shoulder 🙂

1

No babe, the weird stuff you grew up with sort of wins the prize.

1

My only real experience with Muslims was in Africa in 2004. Otherwise I have spoken to Muslim women in a fast food place.

I am friendly with a Minnonite woman in a deli and bakery I go to. Once the subject came up about evil in the world and 2 customers discussed it. They left and I asked the Minnonite clerk about it. She starts out "well, you see the devil . . . . . . "

But I don't see the devil. I really don't. The devil I see is in the image of men.

1

All religious beliefs have weird practices. It is all fairy tales. I had not heard of these practices though.

1

Brought up Catholic, nothing like that but I generally leave my shoes top up cause they are easier to grab.?

1

I think Amish and deep evandelicals have some do their own. Also old catholics have some weird stuff.

Funny thing though, I think that's mostly sunni. The funny thing is that the sunni emphasize puritanism and yet have so many heathen traditions mainly because Mohammad uttered them at one point and got part of the sunna not the Koran. Like the dog is corrupt superstition. Stepping out of the toilet with your left /right foot don't remember. Camel urine... And bcz sunna too is also very stiff and not malleable and focuses on Islam being a regulator of everything otherwise its not perfect. Thus I think sunna is far more systematic and preserved maintaining these actually pre-islamic stuff. And as is said down, judíasm probably wud have identical stuff

kng01 Level 5 Sep 28, 2018
1

Jaysus, no!!! There's always silly superstition but those you described are quite weird.

1

Wow. I mean, all I got was my uncle doing something odd, my mum explaining the superstition behind it, and me just quietly sniggering because of how ridiculous it sounded.

And that was just the standard stuff. Greeting magpies to avoid bad luck, touching wood etc. Nothing as out there as what you're describing.

Basically, I'm glad I grew up in a family of sceptics.

1

Satan pissing in your water... I love that one 🙂

0

Stacking anything on top of a bible was a no-no.

0

I remember stuff like "step on a crack and you'll break your mama's back" but I never actually took it seriously. Even at a young age I could see that there was no connection between where I placed my feet on the pavement and my mother's continued spinal health.

0

The glass of water thing might have some science behind it. If you leave out a glass of water it’ll becone more acidic from mixing with CO2 in the air.

Marz Level 7 Sep 29, 2018
0

Cats could draw a baby's breath away. Bad things always happen in threes. If a gift of something sharp was given, the receiver should give the giver some coins as to not "cut" the friendship. Seven years bad luck if someone broke a mirror. Rubbing the end of a cucumber with the cut-off end would "draw the bitterness out". If an old person slept in the same bed with a young person, the old person would sap the younger person's strength. All from my mother who was an ignorant and dull-witted person.

0

I did not, fortunately. I did have a Jewish friend (who wasn't very religious but was as he put it, culturally Jewish) who told me the orthodox have so many rules it "drives them nuts"-his term. He cited just a few. So it seems to be common across the theistic faiths.

0

Nothing as specific as what you are talking about, I remember in the Mormon church, the need to wear wierd underware, (which I never did) as far as your familys customs. Over the years I have hosted dozens of Muslim students that talked about some of the things you have mentioned. Once here most were dropped as they were paired with american students aside from their prayer rituals. But I have been critisized for not turning my glass over

0

Compared to quite a lot of religious stuff, that's not actually very weird!

Jnei Level 8 Sep 28, 2018
0

Nothing like that at all in our household, that I can recall. So obviously nothing that made a dent. The "step on a crack..." mentioned below was a kid's thing, not family or religious. Spilling salt, black cats, breaking mirrors (except that breaking anything was frowned upon), no special emphasis. I came from a Roman Catholic upbringing, & I'm sure many families may have had their own cultural superstitions. None really in mine. I find the differences very interesting culturally, & some, like the shoes, are culture specific. I will admit to using "knock on wood" at one time, but I stopped that. & I still try to figure out what to say when someone sneezes. I think I've settled on "enough of that!", the "Bless You" thing has been so ingrained that I feel I have to insert something! I don't think your alone with this, though there will be different practices.

Bléss you is nice. I never specified who. Usually I'm talking to dionysis, funny guy, my favorite 😛. Seriously, I take it like get well soon, well wishes, no more

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