Celebrating a Birthday

At the very end of the twenty-second chapter of her Memoirs, Sayyida Salme tacks on a single, stand-alone sentence:

We do not celebrate birthdays. (Memoirs, p. 150)

It just pops in and hangs there. Such a curious non-sequitur after her detailed description of the “big festival,” it invites Westerners – who very much celebrate birthdays! – to wonder about this peculiarity. So, of course, I had to look it up. Turns out this is not just habit or preference, but harkens back to Islam’s recognition of only two annual celebrations, the two Eids:  Eid al-Fitr (the small festival) and Eid al-Adha (the big festival).  Adding a third annual festivity was considered bid’ah, an unwarranted innovation that unacceptably drew from other cultures. Celebrating oneself also counted as self-aggrandizement that distracted from the greatness of Allah.[1] Nowadays there are many modern Muslims who turn this around by celebrating birthdays to thank Allah for another good year of life.

Today America is celebrating a birthday, the birth of a nation through the Declaration of Independence two hundred and fifty years ago – our semiquincentennial (half of 500). Just as celebrating birthdays may have its controversy in Islam, there is plenty of controversy here about what we are celebrating and whether we should celebrate at all.  In the Western tradition, I was raised on linear time – time that seems to go faster the more that time goes by – so I am grateful for markers in time.  Whatever we might think about where 250 years has put us, it is a good thing that we stop and reflect on it, whether we find reason to laud the past or resolve better for the future.

This national U.S. moment is all about freedom – declaring independence – in an inherently self-aggrandizing way.  National pride has its place (shout out to the World Cup!), but not to unhealthy excess. And as many have noted, this new nation repulsed the yoke of bondage in a time of slavery and genocide. The very last, culminating grievance against the King, grievance #27, referred to “domestic [slave] insurrections” and “merciless, Indian savages” spurred on by England.[2] Much of the hypocrisy, dissemblance, and debate about what “freedom” actually does and should mean carries on today.[3]

In a time when the United States is throwing its weight around arguably more than ever,[4] I don’t mind referring back to a book that I considered previously.[5] Historically, the founding principle of “freedom” in the United States was one of liberty, not license. There was a great expectation that citizens would live righteously and free from sin[6] – terms that were then defined by church and community. Even in the American founding, it was not about unadulterated freedom. There was a deeper sense of connectedness around the complexity of what it means to live in a “free” society. Individually, nationally, and globally: None of us is fully independent and completely free. We can celebrate our birthdays, but ideally in recognition of our connectedness to all, even as we strive for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.

Sayyida Salme mentions her own birthday later in the Memoirs, on her first visit back to Zanzibar exactly two decades after she fled, when it was celebrated for her:

It just so happened that my birthday took place during these few days. For the first time ever, I celebrated it in my homeland, where birthdays are not otherwise celebrated. The gentlemen of the squadron went out of their way to make this a truly joyful day for me, and they succeeded magnificently. I cannot be grateful enough for all their kindness. One thing, however, moved me especially oddly: The dear captain of the Adler arranged to have a pig slaughtered to honor me, a born Muslim, in my devout Islamic homeland. Had our most reliable local soothsayers prophesied this event to me nineteen years earlier, even as superstitious as we were, I would have laughed in their faces. What unintended humor can reveal itself in the most fateful challenges of our lives! (Memoirs, pp. 220-21)

I love how she laughs off the irony of the situation, seeing the kindness more than the faux pas. It is an act of giving space, as well as a reminder of the need for such space. We not only have our differences, but must also learn to see and appreciate them. That is the true meaning of liberty; this is the work that ensures our true liberty. 

May our birthday celebrations always celebrate our diversity!

Let history surprise you, let her story inspire you – let her authentic voice speak to you!

Andrea Emily Stumpf

July 4, 2026

Photo credit: Dmitry Sidorov from www.pexels.com

 [1] See also the historical Muslim stance on individual portraiture, which I touch on in my blog posts What the Camera Captured (June 19, 2025) and Lovely in Zanzibar- wish you were here! (September 5, 2025).

[2] “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” (Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776) It is worth noting that Thomas Jefferson’s original draft included a separate grievance attacking the transatlantic slave trade, with the King “waging cruel war against human nature itself” – notwithstanding Jefferson’s own ownership of slaves. To appease Southern colonies, however, that grievance was scrapped and replaced with the opposite complaint, added to the last grievance, that slavery was instead being undermined by the King.

[3] One of my blog posts addresses just one of many aspects: Free to Have a Good Life (May 27, 2024).

[4] Both directly and indirectly, as I point out in my blog post on The Perniciousness of War (April 4, 2026).

[5] Referring to Sophia Rosenfeld’s Age of Choice in my blog posts How to Choose?? Die Qual der Wahl (October 30, 2025) and The Opposite of Choice (November 30, 2025).

[6] “At the time of the American Revolution, liberty as opposed to license, still generally meant the chance to live a life of righteousness, understood as freedom from sin.” Sophia Rosenfeld, The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life, p. 95 (2025).