Over at Life Is A Highway, today’s post is about chickens upsetting people. I left a comment there and this post really got me thinking, I wrote this post about a similar topic a while back. The comment I left was –
I don’t eat there either, and I won’t be anytime soon. I don’t like their food much.
If halal preparation means less nastiness for chickens then it is good, but on a serious note I do not like all this changing stuff because of religion. It’s wrong, in my opinion. When other people’s beliefs begin to intrude on every day life, that’s a bit of an issue. And no wonder the Christians and Atheists and everyone else are annoyed – they have never managed to intrude on every day life in this way, and they are jealous, I think.
I’m ok with the chicken stuff, because this seems like it is a much nicer way of killing the animals according to the RSPCA and I support that. The problem is elsewhere. The problem is the Bacon and Pork.
Let us take a journey into an entirely hypothetical world for a moment.
Lets say for example, that David Koresh had not died, that there was no shootout, that he was arrested by the FBI and then released when all his housemates refused to testify and like the weapons of mass destruction nobody could find any guns. And lets say then he is popular and not ugly and also somewhat stick thin and because of the media attention, people start joining his religion in mass numbers, all over the world.
Let’s say David sat down one evening to have a lovely meal, and ended up with severe food poisoning. So bad in fact, that he ended up in hospital in intensive care. So when he’s feeling better, he makes a sermon, and adds a new rule to his religion – NO FISH. And you can’t eat food from a restaurant that serves fish at all. And you can’t have anything to do with fish whatsoever, because the Devil tries to poison people with Fish.
So as a result, fisherman suddenly find it hard to sell their fish to restaurants. Mcdonalds says goodbye to the Filet of Fish. Fish and chip shops all over the country shut down (sorry Pauline). Fish markets close. An industry vanishes. People are out of work. This could soon happen with Pork, people. I’m not joking around here. If restaurants all choose to become Halal, it might be goodbye to our pig farming industry. This might be a good thing in some people’s opinions.
And the food poisoning scenario described above is actually not that far off what happened with this whole bit being put in the bible in the first place –
Lev 11:7 And THE PIG, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed but does not chew the cud, is unclean to you.
Lev 11:8 You shall not eat any of their flesh, and you shall not touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you.
ev 11:46 This is THE LAW about beast and bird and every living creature that moves through the waters and every creature that swarms on the ground,
Lev 11:47 to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean and between the living creature that may be eaten and the living creature THAT MAY NOT BE EATEN.
So you can’t eat it, and you can’t touch their carcasses – because you could get ill back in those days from doing so. My good friend Anna who I was chatting to about this explained that the bible was written mainly for people who lived in the desert, and in the desert food spoils fast, and you can get really bad diseases when that happens including triconosis which you get from under-cooked Pork.
This Wiki is really interesting and gives many reasons why the ban on pork may have been implemented.
What scares me most about religion is people choosing to live their lives based on outdated rules and information. That’s why I’m not religious. I choose not to follow the bible, the Qur’?n or any other such book. If the Halal way of killing animals is better for everyone, that’s fine and I am willing to accept it. No problems there.
However, the first time I’m told I can’t have bacon on my burger, I’m walking out – and I intend on being extremely vocal about it, too. This is Australia. If I want bacon on my burger, I should be able to get it, and NO religion should be telling me otherwise.
I’m not pretending like I’m educated on all these issues – ignorance is a part of this. I didn’t know anything about why Pork was supposedly so bad, or what Halal really meant, or how it was better for the chickens and stuff. I’ve done a bit of reading on these topics recently, so I know a little more about it now. I’m willing and prepared to accept a better way of doing things, but I also want people to respect *my* culture and beliefs, which include having bacon on a burger. I don’t want to be all “Muslims are bad” and stuff, because I don’t believe that at all.
But I will be honest with you all – it is very threatening to me when things change. I don’t like it. Most humans don’t. I’m willing to look at why I am feeling threatened and try to understand the issues and get educated on them, but a lot of people are not. A lot of people see all this stuff going on, like the Mufti saying those things about uncovered meat and women, and bacon being taken off the menu, and all these veils all over the place, and then with the whole terrorism connection and Jihad and all this scary stuff, people are freaking out.
I probably haven’t made a lot of sense on this issue. I’m finding it hard to find the words really. I am not even sure this says what I want to say.. :) But I’m out of time for now, I may revisit it later.
In the immortal words of John Travolta’s character (Vincent Vega) in Pulp Fiction, “Bacon tastes GOOD. Pork chops taste GOOD!”
What you’ve written here makes sense to me. I’m not anti-religion (nor are you, seems to me) but I do believe a theocracy – government by religious decree – would be a Bad Thing. Unfortunately a lot of religious people seem to think that’s just what the world needs.
Disclaimer: if forced to do so I would describe myself as “religious.” Not that it matters; I’m just saying.
A very interesting thought on the fish –
I am readling a very interesting book called, “Collapse” which discusses civilizations that have come into being and dissapeared.
The author, Dimaond, talks at leangth about how the evnironment factors on Greenland effected the new viking inhabitants.
An interesting question arose from investigations on their diet: They did not eat any of the fish that were plentiful (and is infact currently one of Greenlands bigger exports)…only birds, seals and land mamals.
He pointificats on this question, and concludes that it must have been that an individual got sick from eating a rotten fish when the vikings first arrived there…and therefore that civilization decided that fish = bad.
So you are not too far out there with you post.
((got here from a post that you left on a national blog post))
Tamzin
Here (in the US) we have bans on certain fats used in fastfood restaurants being legislated. I can’t decide if this is an homage to the cult of thin or the cult of instant gratification.
I’m like you, all for less cruelty and less intrusion. I think if a person from a certain religion or philosophy wants to open their own restaurant and serve food acceptable to their religion that’s great. However, I find it terribly wrong to go into established places and force changes on the menu.