As for those who got carried away with their emotions I would say that you should re-read carefully what other people have said.

I wont try to defend those who you have attacked, but I suspect that when you have calmed down you will be ashamed of your efforts, and if you are not then that itself speaks volumes.

This thread is now closed

I hope you find yourself sober someday so you can appreciate just how stupid your comments were.

Maybe you should lie down and get some rest. You obviously have missed the entire point. No one is saying it’s right to exploit people. What they ARE saying is that in some parts of the world, workers will accept minimum wage because it’s much better than what they would receive at home.

The point is that if someone accepts a wage without compulsion, it can be considered ‘reasonable’ for the purposes of the original argument. It may not be reasonable in comparison to other wage rates, but it’s not slavery.

It’s not right to exploit anyone, but unfortunately these people you’re accusing of being heartless aren’t in control of these sweatshops. They’re not making excuses, they’re showing you the reality. That is, people can be greedy.

What comes next? Accusing people who buy things made in China of advocating minimum wage and sweatshops? Where do you purchase your clothing and shoes from? Are you certain someone didn’t produce that at minimum wage? If you can, then I commend you.

Now, would it be possible to actually get back to the original topic at hand?

You make excuse after excuse for the rich to explout the poor MORE than they already do, and I hope you all burn in hell for it.

I agree. Bars on windows are common enough worldwide, and their usage is to keep people out, not in. My flat has bars on all our windows, including the back windows (despite the fact that we’re 8 stories up) and, no, we don’t have a maid.

“These Bengalis are happy to clean our streets for 80 dollars because that 80 dollars is a LOT of money in their country and it’s more than they could earn if they cleaned Bengali streets.”

Absolutely. Come to S’pore, and you’ll see similar scenes. We have tremendous numbers of men from South Asia who work in construction and housing estate maintenance. They work for a few years here to support themselves and their families back home, earning a wage in a country with a standard of living higher than what it is back home.

I hope you all find yourselves starving someday so you can appreciate just how black your hearts are.

Have you seen Bengalis cleaning the streets in Saudi for 300 SR a month (less than 80 dollars) ? Indonesian maids locked inside a home, with bars on the windows – when I asked about the bars, one told me: “Our workers will run away if we don’t have those?” – and when I asked him “If you treated them fairly, why would they want to run away?” – gave me silence as an answer….

The bars were probably there for security to stop people breaking in and he was just joking with you. Most Saudi homes don’t have bars on their windows or the windows of their worker’s homes.

These Bengalis are happy to clean our streets for 80 dollars because that 80 dollars is a LOT of money in their country and it’s more than they could earn if they cleaned Bengali streets. They might get treated badly by a minority of Saudis but apparently not badly enough to keep them away because each year so many of them apply for visas! How do you explain that???

The same goes for the maids. I know you think that just by treating maids well it would have a different outcome but I have heard way too many stories (including from Western expats (non-Muslim) who hired maids and thought by treating them well it would be better ended up with maids stealing from them, running away with a man etc. I remember reading a forum once about maids (I forgot where I think it was in UAE or was it Malaysia) the expats were talking about how they don’t let their Philipino maids go to Church on Sunday because this is where they get together and learn from each other on what to do to their employers. One man installed cameras in his house and caught his Indonesian maid boiling her underwear in water (this is a common magic that Indonesian maids do because apparently by having your employer drink it they will be good to you and be under your spell). There are people who abuse their rights as employers but there are just as many maids who have abused their situations and even people who would want to treat their maids well have ended up being scammed because they are perceived to be easy targets if they are nice.

It’s a sad situation overall.

1. Buying Muslim as a strong or overriding preference is anti-competative in the Muslim/Halal market. This is because the market is small and closed in many ways, businesses have disproportionate influence in it, which is further magnified when Muslims feel obliged to purchase from them.

As I said before, the “anti-competitiveness” of a market – in your example here, halal butcheries – does not lie with the preferences of the consumers, but rather with the lack of rival firms. In fact, you effectively pin-point the source in your next line:

The market acts as an oligopoly where sellers collude to increase prices (e.g. halal butchers)…

Given that this is the case, the “solution” does not lie with Muslim consumers changing their preferences, but with eliminating artificial barriers to entry (if there are any). If barriers are removed, or if it comes to be known there are no serious barriers, then the “problem” would “solve” itself because more competitors will be attracted to the market and so prices will naturally incline towards a productively and allocatively efficient level.
Incidentally, I have no idea whether there is explicit collusion in, say, the Sydney halal butchery market. I wouldn’t have thought so, but that’s an empirical question (and a notoriously difficult one to prove beyond reasonable doubt). In explaining higher prices for halal meat in Sydney, rather than appealing to collusion, one could just as easily say it is due to a combination of (i) some degree of market-power (due to slight product differentiation and natual limits to demand) and (ii) higher total costs due to it being a bit more labour-intensive than non-halal meat production.

2. Muslim preferential purchasing is discrimination based on religion and if it were applied to us be would be outraged.

I’m not so sure about that, esp. in a benign form. For example, I don’t feel outraged when strict followers of Judaism feel obligated to make their homes kosher, which entails buying foodstuffs and various items from stores owned by observant Jews. Nor do I feel outraged by Greeks who insist on drinking only Greek coffee made by Greeks (because that’s the best type of coffee). Nor do I feel outraged by the “Buy New Zealand Made” campaign. Etc. Maybe I’m just not easily outraged. What would be offensive to me however, would be where a seller of an ordinary commodity refused to serve someone based purely on religious affiliation, race or ethnicity.

3. Quite the contrary every halal butcher one comes across makes the claim that their meat is halal because they are upright Muslim and one cannot trust non-Muslims in this regard, although the evidence is strongly to the contrary. Example; The halal food authority in the UK …

I was thinking more of Australia than the UK. Is there any evidence of this in the case of, say, Sydney halal butcheries in general?
And anyway, for the practices you have cited, depending on the criterion one is using for “halal,” one might well say the businesses themselves (which thus includes their products) are not halal at all because they are violating clear and basic rules of Islamically acceptable business practices. [Cf. al-Qur'an, 4:29, 5:8, 7:85, 83:1-6; Bukhari, Book 34; Muslim, Book 10; Abu-Dawud, Book 22.]

By widening the number of suppliers and by bringing halal meat from the cottage industry to the mainstream it is much more likely that this sort of scandal is less likely to occur.

Precisely … which is why the issue of the discerning preferences of Muslim consumers is a moot point in the long-run.

4. When one supports inefficient sheltered industries with tariffs, trade barriers and in this case an unwritten obligation of patronage it does encourage them to be lax etc.

Agreed, but as noted a few times now, consumers’ preferences are not barriers to entry per se. The consumers’ preferences in no way prevent new firms which produce better quality products at lower prices from entering the market. If anything, it encourages new firms to enter if preferences for good quality at low prices are not currently being met!

5. Although I did not want to mention it, the other aspect of this sheltered workshop mentality is carried over into the masjid

Well, that’s a whole other can o’ worms with its own particularities. Incidentally, this might be a case where some degree of government support (not control) might not go astray. For example, the Turkish community in Australia is far better organised than any other in this regard largely due to support from the Turkish government (…although some think the T. govt goes a bit beyond “support” into “regulation”, but that’s for another thread).