In Religions
Many religious male figures are recorded to have had facial hair; for example, all the prophets mentioned in the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) were known to grow their beards. Other religions, such as Sikhism, encourage growing beards. Some scholars among Sunni Muslims see growing the beard to be an obligatory act as it was preferred by the Prophet Mohammed himself, while other scholars see it as encouraged but optional. Amish men grow beards after becoming married, but continue to shave their moustache in order to avoid historical associations with military facial hair due to their pacifistic beliefs.
Read more about this topic: Facial Hair
Famous quotes containing the word religions:
“The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“It is a quite remarkable fact that the great religions of the most civilized peoples are more deeply fraught with sadness than the simpler beliefs of earlier societies. This certainly does not mean that the current of pessimism is eventually to submerge the other, but it proves that it does not lose ground and that it does not seem destined to disappear.”
—Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)