Obsession with westernisation

How do the above depressing facts relate to Friday as being the national holiday instead of Sunday? Do people in Bangladesh have the genetic or biological propensity to produce more on Friday than Sunday? Productivity is a complex factor of work environment, social/political and regulatory condition, work attitude, work ethics, competitiveness, reward, innovation, strategic planning etc, and not just business synchronization with Western holiday as the writer asserts. Generally, most of our trades with West are time-insensitive in nature, unlike currency trading or oil spot sales. Moreover, these days financial transactions happen over electronic banking and Internet and they are Friday or Sunday blind, thus Naeem's argument rings hollow.

Let's get back to the root of Saturday and Sunday as western weekly holiday. Saturday or Saabath is ordained as the "day of rest" in Old Testament for the Judaic people. They are forbidden to do any business or financial transaction and have to devote their time to God's worship as proclaimed in Torah. Christians, being successors of Judaic tradition, continued the old tradition after Christianity became an organised/institutionalised religion. As Christianity spread in the Roman Empire during the 2nd and 3rd century, the Christians ran into a headlong collision path with the pagan Romans, who used to worship their Sun god on Sunday and that is how the name evolved. To avoid persecution, the early Christians aligned themselves with the Roman weekly holiday as their own religious resting day. That's how Saturday and Sunday became the defacto western holiday after the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Western weekly holiday embodies history and tradition for them as Friday does for Muslims.

Conversely, if we were to argue that the West has to align with the East by changing their weekly holiday, any Western citizen will laugh at this ridiculous idea. Or should we prescribe the same dress that a European wears for a tribesman in Africa, just because that will synchronize the dress for everyone so that only GAP or Levi's Jeans exist? The world is a rich place with its diversity, tradition, cultures and lifestyles. One has to learn to respect difference as essential part of human enrichment process. It's not bread alone that matters how one earns his bread is equally important. It is as much laughable to ask an European/American to give up his lifestyle as it is for us.

We need to change our attitude.