Gazi Erdem Talks about Turkish Cuisine and Culture

Janine Aloisi: Our next guest is from the Turkish Consulate in New York City.
Gazi Erdem is a Religious Affairs Attaché. He will explain to us
the significance of Asure from Islamic prospective.

Gazi Erdem: When you come to Asure as our roots it comes from Arabic word
ash-ra and it means 10 and accordingly from that roots ash-ra
means 10th of MuHarram, MuHarram is the first year of Islamic
Calendar, so it’s the importance dates for Muslim’s because
Muslim calendar start with that day and in addition to that 10th of
MuHarram is very important day for Muslims.

Actually it is not only important for Muslims also very important
for Christians and Jews believers because those date more
important point for those believers. For example it is the date of
Moses who came from escaped from Egypt from Tiran of Egyptian
rulers he’s community and the date actually also marks the date of
Abraham’s following to fire or his releasing from fire. So this is
very important for Muslim’s as well because Muslim’s in general
believe all those profits as their own profits and this is a part of
their belief.

As a Muslim in that day prophets Salem Saleh Salem solved the
Jewish people when he came to Medina they were fasting and said
we should fast, it’s not fast prophets Salem Saleh Salem
recommended that day for his companions to fast that day.

So it becomes asuna for the Muslims. So when you look at the
Muslims all over the world today, most of the people and most of
the Muslims fast in this particular day and the other thing actually
as a common thing between all religions because it marks to peace
be up on him action or no surviving from the flats at that point it’s
that point actually that day it happens the 10th of MuHarram and
they made a special food on that day.

What day you find in the ship they got together everything what
they found and put in a dish and made a very nice food and that
food actually, became a custom for believers. Now a day we
follow that custom, the custom of new and we call that dish as
Noah’s pudding, this is very important especially in Muslim
culture because the custom teach us and teaches our children, our
generation to share. Sharing is very important for the part of Islam
and since this custom teaches us sharing it becomes according. The
very important so now a day actually we can see Muslim people
making their Noah’s pudding share with the neighbors, share with
the other believers, and share with the other people, share even
who doesn’t know anything about that culture. So it’s very
important for us to teach the custom of that profit.

So when we look the event from all sites it’s very important for
Muslims as the last point I would like to celebrate all of your
Asure day or Noah’s pudding day and I hope this is going to be a
very good custom in this country for the people of America. Peace
be with you all.