TV Dinners and Adab
March 12, 2008“TV dinner ruin children manners” according to the Association of Schools and College Leaders.
Lack of a traditional family meal has produced a generation of kids with bad manners, head teachers have warned.
Since parents allow their children to eat while watching TV, the responsibility of teaching kids how to communicate with one another has come on the shoulders of schools.
Source
The Arabic word for manners or etiquette - “adab”, also means “feast” or “banquet”. It was traditionally understood that during meal times children learned manners and proper etiquette. How to behave with adults, elders, siblings, those younger than them. They also gained communication skills from the dinner table conversation.
People from societies closer to “fitra” find it strange that some people have meals on their own, and those even more closer to fitra find it weird people eat on separate plates!
On a holiday to Marrakesh me and my wife met an American family who have settled there (2nd generation converts i.e. their parents converted so they were born Muslim), one of the highlights of our trip was having sharing a meal with their family - one Tagine dish between 8 people, a couple and their two young kids and their grandparents. Sharing emphasised because this is one of the most important qualities you learn from this experience. It was Friday so it’s tradition to have meat, we had a delicious lamb tagine with couscous.
As we were the guests the people sitting next to us were breaking off the nice bits of the meat and placing it on our part of the bowl, doing it quite subtly as well that we didn’t always notice.
There is also more barakah in a shared meal, I didn’t think 1 tagine would be enough for 8 people but all of us ate until we were full and there were left over’s for the cats.
The Arabic language is filled with these beautiful insights, it is a miraculous language. It’s fascinating the ASC have found the link between manners and meals, while this understanding was built within the language of the Arabs since pre-Islamic times.
