Word: customs
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...every child takes the first name of all his male ancestors. Often following the first name is a descriptive word or two, telling; about the character of the person, making a true African name somewhat like a story. This may sound most unusual to Americans, but it is the custom of my people...
...listened to TV or the radio would have known the news at least eight minutes* before the crowd in front of the palace. Others were duly notified in the traditional manner, even if it came as no surprise. A handwritten statement was posted at the Home Office, for by custom the Home Secretary is the "first" to be informed after the royal family; a little later, a third announcement was pinned to the gates of Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London. Throughout the kingdom, church bells pealed, and at Lloyd's the famed Lutine...
...Moslem himself, regards Ramadan as so much cultural excess baggage. He has already officially abolished the veil in Tunisia and introduced European notions of marriage and divorce in place of Islamic laws, in which women have little or no rights. Then he set to work on Ramadan, a custom which he believes helps hold Islamic countries in "stagnation, weakness and decadence." Last year in Ramadan he imposed midnight curfew on coffeehouses and other soots where revelers congregated until dawn...
Before a political meeting in a Tunis movie house, he called Ramadan, with its positive requirements of prayers and meditation, a religiously "beautiful custom" that in practice too often is a "pretext that paralyzes our activity." He shocked his hearers by urging them not to fast during Ramadan, which begins Feb. 29. As a clinching argument, Bourguiba recalled that even Mohammed, when inconveniently overtaken by Ramadan on his march to Mecca, counseled his soldiers: "Break the fast, and you will be stronger to confront the enemy." Today's enemy for Tunisia, said Bourguiba, is the "humiliating backward condition...
...being themselves on the moon? 3) What color will they dye the ends of their prayer shawls-blue on earth, to denote the color of the sky-when the lunar sky is black? Answers: Jews on the moon (or anywhere) are earthlings, must act according to terrestrial time and custom...