OF CHRISTIANS, HALAAL AND KOSHER FOODS!

Of Christians, halaal and kosher foods

*TANONOKA JOSEPH WHANDE

 

http://www.mmegi.bw/2007/February/Wednesday7/187.php

If religion split the world community into incongruous factions, food is on track to make the sour religious relations totally unpalatable. Foods prepared or animals slaughtered under one faith's customs are causing consternation in other faiths and vice versa. Moslems will eat nothing but halaal foods, meaning foods that are "permitted, allowed or legal" within their faith.

In the meantime, Jews will not eat anything that is not kosher, i.e. food that "satisfies the requirements of Jewish law." They have their own way of slaughtering animals for food. Meat and milk must not be cooked or consumed together, and separate utensils must be kept for each.

As for Christians, it varies from church to church. Catholics, for example, would eat meat with minimal specific sanctions but suspend consumption of meats on Fridays, the weekday when Jesus was murdered.

Who, honestly, would want to be the chef in this world's kitchen?

While complaints by Christians against halaal or kosher foods are slowly picking up momentum, Moslems are gravely concerned about haraam foods (the opposite of halaal) whose availability they blame on Christians.

"Except in abnormal circumstances such as when an animal is being hunted down," instructs the Muslim Food Board, "Zabah is performed by first reciting Bismillah hir Rahmaanir or Bismillah Allahu Akbar three times and then cutting four vital organs in the region between the throat, head and breast bone of the animal." The Muslim Food Board goes on to identify the four vital organs to be cut as the windpipe, the gullet, and the two jugular veins. Very important to note, it says, is that the knife should not touch the spinal cord. This means that the head of the animal should not be cut off or the neck broken during a slaughter.

Christians and animal rights groups, each for different reasons, are clamouring for this method of slaughter to be prohibited by law in the UK and in most of the European Union.

I observed slaughters of goats and cows at funerals and weddings in rural areas. The cow would be given an axe blow just behind the horns between the ears. It is pure hell, agony multiplied by itself. The blow would be expected to bring the poor cow to its knees where it is shoved to lie on its side as the executioners rush in with knives to cut its throat and stand back to watch as it bleeds to death, kicking aimlessly and violently with pain every time they poke into the fresh wound to see if it still reacts. Hardly any tribesman owns a stun gun, an item that needs to be licensed. Who would bother to 'kill the animal twice' when the axe is there, waiting and with no need for licensing?

So, why is there solemn resistance and resentment towards animals killed under halaal guidelines? The brutality is basically the same.

People of other faiths object to the presence of a Muslim cleric chanting or performing religious rites, unique to their faith, while animal welfare groups would like the animals to be stunned first before cutting their throats to, they contend, lessen the pain for the animals.

In the UK in 2003, the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) recommended to government, which it advises, "The method of animal slaughter used by Jews and Muslims should be banned immediately."

In a letter to me, dated January 10, 2007, Simon Renn of the FAWC Secretariat, reiterated his Council's Recommendation 201 and wrote, "FAWC considers that slaughter without pre-stunning is unacceptable and that the Government should repeal the current exemption (granted on religious grounds)."

Compassion In World Farming supported FAWC's recommendation to government saying, "We believe that the law must be changed to require all animals to be stunned before slaughter."

The British Government did not accept the recommendation.

"The Government is committed to respect for the rights of religious groups," said the government's response to FAWC. "And government accepts that an insistence on a pre-cut or immediate post-cut stun would not be compatible with the requirements of religious slaughter by Jewish and Muslim groups..."
  
Writing in the Botswana Guardian (Jan 5, 07), a Banks Ndebele lamented, "The point is that Halaal is an unholy practice for non Muslims. Non Muslims have their own beliefs and they should not be indirectly or directly forced to entertain what they do not believe in."

This is a serious matter. The issue involves two very powerful entities: Moslems and Jews. As Ndebele noted, whenever this topic comes up, Muslims claim they are being targeted and are being discriminated against. Meanwhile, Jews mutter something about anti-Semitism.

There is a lot to say about this subject, which, in all circumstances, is a smoldering issue that will very soon overtake governments and church leaders.

Some argue that while Christians are tolerant of other religions, other religions are not tolerant of Christians. Christians claim they are the ones to compromise in almost everything at all times.

And, they press on, the prevalence and domineering presence of halaal and kosher foods in supermarkets in Christian countries is testimony to the tolerance of Christianity, which, unfortunately, appears to be misinterpreted as a weakness, especially if one considers how Christians continue to be executed in predominantly Moslem countries just for being Christian.

"The problems," said Botswana's Daily News, "include a condition by the majority of Muslim shop-owners that chickens be slaughtered according to Halaal requirements - a ritual they (small scale producers) cannot afford." Apparently, 'a permit worth P5 000 per year' was needed 'for one to be allowed to engage a priest to perform the halaal ritual.'

The paper went on to say the problems of the local small scale producers are compounded by the fact that "the majority of shop owners are Muslims and want Halaal." This is just not kosher!

"We know of halaal requirements by most shops," lamented a Peter Kirby, identified then as chairperson of the Poultry Association in Botswana, "and it is unfortunate that things seem to be going the way of Muslims."

Religion or business? Politics or discrimination? Christians pronounce it intolerance.
There is no doubt though that the two, Judaism and Islam, cause so much debate and stir deep emotions, if the geographical concentration of political and social instability today is anything to go by. All we have to look at is the turbulence in Israel and Palestine, while, for better or for worse, the so-called Middle East is in firefights with the west, witness Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc. It is disturbing that these are also predominantly Moslem countries.

The danger we face is the growing suspicion and frustration among Christians who see Islam as encroaching dangerously too close to their values. Resistance is building up and this might bring us into a confrontation that we might not be able to quell. There is also the issue of right-wingers and ultra-nationalists, prevalent in the UK and Europe, who are spoiling for a fight. "There is no imperative for Muslims or Judaists to eat meat produced in this manner (stunned)," says Roy Saich, spokesperson of the Humanists Movement.

There is no reason why they should not simply abstain from eating meat altogether if they do not wish to eat the same meat as the rest of us."

Others are deceptively conciliatory, acknowledging that people should change enough 'to be a part of our country, not change us or change our country to be a part of them.'

There are no infidels in this world. Christians say they appreciate religious freedom because it involves their willingness to honour and celebrate those whose beliefs differ from their own.

The Koran acknowledges as much and says, "I shall not worship that which you worship. Nor will you worship that which I worship. Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion."  (Sura CIX 4-6).

"Our sentiments are uniformly on the side of religious liberty," wrote Scott Henderson in the Greenville News, South Carolina, "that religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals - that no man ought to suffer in name, person, or effects on account of his religious opinions."

Moslems and Christians the world over, please take note!
*Tanonoka Joseph Whande is a Zimbabwean journalist.

 

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