Forum Topic

Halal Meat

Halal Meat Muslims say a prayer before they kill an animal. Christians say a prayer before they eat it. I'm not sure why either of these practices should be thought particularly offensive. How on earth does eating a piece of meat or poultry that has been slaughtered with a prayer equate to accepting or supporting a religious practice? Why are you so threatened if a person has said a couple of words in Arabic beforehand? With so much crap going on in the world it's ridiculous (and frankly embarrassing) that this is something of major concern to the extent that it is creating so many headlines. Granted, people should be told if they are eating halal meat, but the vitriolic responses are becoming increasingly disturbing. This is not about food standards, it is not about 'defending' a secular society, it is not about labelling or consumer rights or animal welfare. This is about the fact that some people just don't like Muslims.Slaughterhouses are businesses, they also have "the right to choose" to conduct and practice their business in whichever way they wish in order to maximise their customer base. Pizza Express and other restaurants also have "the right to choose" what their menu consists of, again in order to maximise their customer base. Both halal-compliant slaughterhouses and Pizza Express are doing just that, nothing sinister or malicious or untoward. You have the right as the consumer to choose what you buy/eat, sure, which is why it's important that products are labelled well and that, say, places which use halal meat say that they do. Which Pizza Express was doing anyway. This wasn't a secret, the company are pretty clear about it on their website and if this matters so much to you then surely in order to exercise your "right to choose" as a consumer and decide whether/not to eat there you have to actually go and do some research? If you want to be an engaged consumer you have to actually be an engaged consumer, you can't expect everybody to do it for you, you have to ask. When you buy a chocolate bar, do you expect somebody to rush up to you and say 'BY THE WAY THAT CONTAINS NUTS~!' or do you read the packaging?This is a story about lazy people who couldn't be bothered to act like engaged consumers and are horrified to find out that they were 'unwittingly' being given something they never asked not to be given in the first place. That is all it is.You guys can eat anything even pigs that roll in their own filth but you wont eat HALAL which is clean meat.  You know, the bible also says you shouldn't eat pork as it is 'unclean'.....just saying for all of you stating this is a christian country. Bit of course it's nothing to do with the meat, it's just another excuse to have a pop at Muslims isn't it. I for one am proud to live in a multicultural society and am glad that my child is growing up in one. I would hate for her to grow up as a little Englander with a hateful, narrow view of the world and frightened of anything even remotely different to her. Pork is banned in the christian religion. Read the bible and find out. Stop this vendetta against Halal meat......how many will get an Asian / Indian halal curry after a night Boozing! And as usual I bet the Muslim parents wouldn't have an issue with pork etc as long it was served n cooked separately to the Halal food which would also apply if catering for vegetarians and non vegetarians!! British Muslims have every right to be catered for. They are as British as the rest. I think people are worried in case the ritual prayers are in fact spells which will turn them all into Muslims. This week's row has got nothing all to do with animal welfare. The fuss is about people's fears over the covert Islamification of society. You may or may not agree that concerns are realistic or even legitimate, but food suppliers and others concerned ought not to deny that it is an issue or answer criticisms honestly. I don't think eating halal meat actually turns you into a Muslim. This time it is aimed at Muslims. However assaults on ritual slaughter have a long history in terms of European anti-Semitism. This is just more of the same, prejudice dressed up as concern for animal welfare. Taking lives, foods and shelters of others are cruelty, so, don't take meat, fish and vegetables  for food because they have lives. Don't milk animals because they are their babies food. Don't take drinks because they are the abodes of so many living creatures. Don't let mothers do breast-feeding because it harms their beauty.....Just be the champion of saints of mankind! "  - Do this words sounds funny? Hope, don't for those champions who are the modern advocates of "RIGHTS". Stunning is unethical. Stunning causes the animal SO much pain. Halal is HUMANE and CARING to the animal. Denmark is a country that SUPPORTS animal cruelty. Science has shown the Halal is peaceful. Science has shown that stunning causes animals PAIN and SUFFERING. Centuries ago people were more natural. Stop perverted GMO and perverted food practices. Islam is the best way of life.Birmingham school says sorry for serving non-Halal meat to Muslim pupils. Council catering staff had wrongly dished up the non-Halal food to Muslim pupils on December 12, but details have only just come to light. On Monday parents received a letter from Craig Jansen, head of the 1,400-pupil secondary school and sixth form, in which he apologised unreservedly for the incident. There are hundreds  of state and church schools where Muslim children are in majority. In my opinion, all such schools may be opted out as Muslim Academies so that non-Muslim children could enjoy their own meals in their own schools. IA London School of Islamics Trust    

Iftikhar Ahmad ● 4366d47 Comments

Yes, I've experienced at first hand halal death. Shocking. When I first went to live in northern Nigeria, with my Arab Moslem husband, I hadn't a clue. We Glasgow girls knew a lot of things, but halal wasn't one of them.As the new "wargida", mistress of the house, I had to buy or order in the food. I had a cook, thank God. I asked him to go to the abattoir and get a goat, the meat of choice and plenty. Off he went with our car and driver and came back with ....nothing! I asked him where were the butchered cuts and he sort of smiled at my naivety and popped open the boot, whereupon a beautiful tan Sokoto kid jumped out and started tearing around the garden. I was astonished. My Scottish disconnect from our food sources was almost total.I hurried indoors and sat in trepidation. I really didn't know what to expect, or do. Next thing I heard this horrendous screeching and squealing, like a baby being tortured, and I ran out the back. The poor animal had been hoisted upside down from a tree branch, in great distress, waiting for a suitable person to come and be the slaughterer, as my cook was a Christian, and that would never do. The animal screamed for around 20 minutes before someone came. I had retreated inside the house by this time, greatly distressed, but aware that this was "custom" and maybe I shouldn't interfere.The actual throat slitting elicited a very different anguished cry from the goat, which gradually weakened over the course of a minute or two. Then silence. I sat and cried till my husband came home and then had a huge argument with him over this callous barbarity. I refused from that day to buy any live animals for slaughter and tried as often as possible to buy beef, chicken and lamb from abroad. It didn't turn me to vegetarianism, but to a place where welfare in animal husbandry is very important to me.I had to relax this rule when my mother-in-law visited, as she would only eat halal meat. I would get one of my sisters-in-law to provide the meat. Mind you, that didn't really work. As I was a Christian, and my cook a Christian, she didn't really trust us, so would bring her own lunch or dinner with her, making sure it had been properly prayed over. Reprehensible, in her son's house.Once in Beirut I tried to show good faith by clearing the table and washing the dishes. Next thing I knew all the dishes were being washed again, and as my sister-in-law explained, because I was an unbeliever and hadn't said the right prayers, the dishes were contaminated and needed to be done again by a Moslem. That, dear forum reader, was when I gave up on Islam as being a modern philosophy fit for our time. I did not hold this against anyone, just spiritually distanced myself. Life-affirming and charitable is not how I would describe how Islam is currently practised, in the main. What a great shame, and what a dishonour to all those old Arab scholars who brought civilisation to the western world.

Judith Jaafar ● 4331d

Europe and the west in General was a utopia before Muslim migration, the white race on the whole has been a millstone around the necks of the non white races, from the crusades to genocides in the Americas to slavery to colonialism to support for corrupt regimes to invasions and occupation etc yet some still have the gall to wonder why some strike back. Your policies over the past hundreds of years have produced this, and you blame us? Who funded madrassas in Pakistan to churn out extremists? Who funded bin laden and his ilk in the early years? Who supported corrupt regimes like the Ba'ath party and in many cases helped them into power ? Whose polices created the Middle East we see today? Almost everyone who has been involved in terrorism in the west from 9/11 to 7/7 to Madrid to Glasgow etc have cited your foreign policy as their recruiting sergeant , your inept reactions to when non white humans are blown apart from bombs and policies sown in your countries as you sleep worrying about if your local school may serve halal meals.I wish my people had the same worries, I wish they could so easily sidestep the wanton destruction you have reaped upon them and then point furiously at them and call them uncivilised for reacting in the same way as you albeit on a much smaller scale. Its a sad and pathetic that people including la pen and some Danes choose to make their discrimination so clear, particularly over a basic essential for human life, food.Every body should be free to choose and surely its not too difficult to dish up a meat free meal and a meal based on meat at schools. I do it a lot, I do not eat meat, neither do a couple of my children, my husband and other 3 children do eat meat, in 40 years its never been an issue. People like la pen,Danes and others who are deliberately targeting people because of their personal choice in what they eat should be ashamed of them selves, but unfortunately are too self righteous and judgemental be able to accept that some people do not conform to their own often hideous views Why is it so difficult for some Europeans to respect the basic cultural or religious sensibilities of other Europeans .Will those children who cannot eat pork for religious reasons i.e Muslim and Jewish be excluded from the dining area or if they want to join their classmates have to eat pork.Somehow I cannot imagine a British school insisting that Muslim and Jewish children being denied this very fundamental acknowledgement of their faith and their culture .The dark forces which so disfigured the European continent are never far away . The Roman catholic "liberation" of Spain from Moorish Muslims centuries ago used pork as a weapon against Muslims and Jews alike. One showed one's religious beliefs by accepting and eating pork meat. This was often required to be done publicly by those suspected of hiding their true religion. If the actual Abrahamic faiths are adhered to, still allows the consumption of pork in certain circumstances. Basically, God has no use for a dead follower. The majority of people who seem to have a problem with Jews and Muslims not eating Pork are Christians... Miss Le Pen being a Catholic herself as well....So, if tomorrow, a butcher starts selling cat and dog meat in London, it would be fine and all Christians would happily give it a try at least? The Bible says: "And the pig, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed but does not chew the cud, is unclean to you. You shall not eat any of their flesh, and you shall not touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you." and Jesus said ""Think not that I came to destroy the Law [Torah] and the Prophets [prophet hood]. I did not come to destroy them, but rather to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments [from the Law] and teaches men so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the Kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." [Matt. 5:17]So the question to be asked is not why should Christians be prevented from eating pork in the schools, the question should be why should the Christians eat pork at all, as well, when it is forbidden to them too, very clearly. If only Christians did what the Bible tells them to do....this would not be an issue at all...And please don't give me the OLD Testament, New Testament argument because certainly Christians cherry pick laws from the Old Testament that suit their purpose because Jesus did not abolish any part of the LAW and the words of Jesus should be above the words of any other person, at least to a Christian. A secular state means that the state does not have a religion. It doesn't mean that the state should attack the religious beliefs and practices of its citizens. That's what's called an authoritarian state. Stopping schools serving non-pork products is vile racism directed at small children. Le Pen is in direct line to the Nazi collaborators of Vichy. She is the lowest of the low. Jews do not eat pork because of their religious beliefs. Marine Le Pen should be a woman of very low intelligence and wants to exploit cheapest instincts of human beings to propagate hate and violence other tribes as animals do in jungles.  Pork does not only offend Muslims. It is also forbidden to Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and vegetarians, many of which latter are secular. Trying to force pork upon people is not merely an attempt to humiliate the target group; it is an act of Christian supremacist. In seeking to victimise Muslims, they are making a statement of principle that all diversity is unacceptable. This is an attack on everyone, and should be responded against by everyone.France may be a secular state but ]first a democratic country and it is so absurd and foolish to stop people eat or drink things that they do wish to eat or drink. She can not order people to do things that she likes in her town because she wants to annoy them. She is stupid and a hate monger.

Iftikhar Ahmad ● 4331d