The Australian reports today:
In the absence of halal food - prepared in accordance to sharia dietary laws - the Islamic delegates were forced to eat “salad sandwiches and vegetarian pies”.
Prominent Muslim leader Fadi Rahman, who attended the two-day conference a fortnight ago, yesterday attacked summit organisers for failing to make halal food available for Islamic delegates.
He said the event’s catering manager could not distinguish between halal food - where animals, excluding pigs, are killed under religious supervision for hygienic and humanitarian reasons - and vegetarian food.
“They just thought to themselves vegetarian will do, that’s halal and that’s it, eat it,” he said. “But we said, ‘No, vegetarian is not halal. Vegetarian is vegetarian. Halal food is totally different, shouldn’t you guys have done your homework?’
“We were thinking to ourselves, ‘What the hell is going on? If they can’t get the halal food right, what the hell can they get right?”‘
54 comments ↓
Outrageous!
This IS a disgrace. I had so much hope that 2020 would be a turning point in Muslim-Australian relations and then I read that those islamophobes didn’t serve halal party pies or halal sausage rolls and the Muslims had to suffer the humiliation of eating salad rolls and vegetarian food.
Who the hell was the caterer? Lynndie England??
Vegetarian food is halal.
Come on, if they were Islamophobes they wouldn’t have invited Muslims. Stupid? yes. Ignorant? Undoubtedly. But stop looking for insults.
I wonder if there was kosher food?
I cannot believe that an issue has been made out of this…..
I and many other muslims often attend business lunches etc and we are more than happy to eat vegetarian food………
media hype i think….
How is this story newsworthy? And how ‘prominent’ is this guys anyway?
‘‘No, vegetarian is not halal. Vegetarian is vegetarian. Halal food is totally different…’
Enough said… Bitching about lack of halal meat is laughable, “eat up, or shut up” as my mom would say…
And to think this Muslim who can’t even get basic things relating to religion is representing us is haunting.
It’s embarrassing to even mention this. A salad sandwich for lunch over two days is hardly going to going to hurt you and it’s not an insult to Muslims or Islam.
The way he’s carrying on, you’d think they tied up him and force-fed him dog meat.
Its a disgrace,
some of those people are down to their last 150kg’s, If they eat a salad diet, they may waste away .
some of those stomachs have never experienced salad, they might be allergic to it.
Can you imagine being forced to eat something not dripping in fat and calories. That’s cruel and unusual.
Its something the human rights and equal opportunity commission must look into, and I can feel some “spontaneous street theatre as protest” coming on.
Where will our humiliation end??????????
Antish, darling. The commenters above you were being sarcastic.
“This was the Rudd Government’s second major summit-related gaffe involving a religious minority after the Prime Minister was forced to apologise to Jewish community leaders for holding the talkfest during the Passover.”
Taken from this article by Kerbaj: http://www.news.com.au/adelaid.....01,00.html
I do not see the big deal in this (not providing halal meat), nor do I feel Mr. Rudd had to apologize for it.
I am pretty sure it was no cheap catering company and the salad sandwiches would of been nice enough.
I agree the media is making a big deal out of it, but also some of the Muslims at the summit seem to have made an issue out of nothing.
People, please ignore this, it’s coming from Fadi Rahman.
You’d think our ‘Leaders’ would exhibit a little more grace in the ‘difficult’ circumstances at the talkfest, er, Summit. You know, thanking the good Lord for the two day detox opportunity, or something along those lines.
Its the little things.
You people should be ashamed of yourselves. The attendees need our sympathy, not our censure. Do you not fathom the confusion and fear they must have experienced when facing a vegetarian pasty instead of a roast beef sandwich with the works?
Let us hope our dear man-of-the-people PM will arrange some sort of crisis line for those affected. They’ll require counselling.
If he had forced the Muslim men to strip down and made them form a human Abu Ghraib-style pyramid on the roof of parliament house with Gillard “doing a Lynndie“, it still wouldn’t have come close to the public humiliation of forcing Muslims to eat salad.
Say no to salad! Say yes to tandoori chicken!
The fact is a lot of so called vegetarian food is not halal or vegetarian.Then again, machine slaughtered meat is not halal either, but you can buy it with certification that says so. Then again, this is a non-issue to most Muslims, just the freaks who look at ingredients and think the sacred law should be followed and not just altered out of convenience.
I can empathise with the guy.
As a young lad I went on a multitude of kafir public school camps to the Australian Outback (Canberra et al) and after initially consuming the offering of vegetarian sausages and pies etc, I puked, then I regurgitated, and then I vomited. And, after nominating and voting myself in as the Caliph, I made ijtihad (I linked suicide to disgusting veg food) and declared Veg produced at that place and time to be haram, and decided I’d rather fast.
Australia is a Christian country so he should have just said bismillah and eaten the beef and chicken sandwiches.
Abdul Rahman there are lots of scholars who say we can eat the meat in this country because it’s a Christian country and so the 3asl of the meat is that it’s halal. There are also fatawa from reputable scholars on the permissibility of machine slaughtered meat.
Why don’t you guys give those Muslims a break?
Where in the article did it say they complained or made a big deal about it? In fact it clearly says that Fadi accepted Rudd’s apology in good humour! Does that sounds like someone complaining?
For all we know Fadi might have only made those comments because the journalist or someone asked him about the halal food issue, not because he was actively complaining about it.
Not to mention, the author of the article is well known for portraying Muslims negatively, and that salad sandwiches are hopeless on very long, hard, tiring days!
Have a little mercy on your brothers and sisters, why don’t you?
“They just thought to themselves vegetarian will do, that’s halal and that’s it, eat it,” he said. “But we said, ‘No, vegetarian is not halal. Vegetarian is vegetarian. Halal food is totally different, shouldn’t you guys have done your homework?’
Sounds like active complaining to me. And if it wasn’t meant in this way, the wiser thing to do would have been to say “No comment. We didn’t mind what we were provided with at lunch even though it was not halal”.
Okay. They made a mistake. But they are not even Muslim! And they were looking for a dialog.
I can understand the attendees’ frustration, but they may not have “attacked” the organizers.
And once again, we are diverted from the main issue, by a small detail. What was discussed in the meeting? Did anything positive happen? Was anybody converted from Islamophobe into a normal human being?
I remain unconvinced about the non-Zabiha meat issue. Surely the mere fact that Halal butchers exist and do a roaring trade would put doubt to this ‘Bismillah and be done with it’ attitude.
wow, the opportunity to bash our fellow Muslims can certainly blind us to the most obvious things.
Are you all feeling rather good that you managed to get your digs in? Excellent
Thank you Fadi for speaking out for us Muslims living in Australia. Thank you for believing that seeing as we are part of this wonderful nation, that our Government should take into consideration something as small as our diet which is not hard to do.
Isn’t it illustrative that, of all the newsworthy contributions our ‘leaders’ could have made, it was their less than refined response to a hosts mistake. I’m not terribly convinced that this qualifies as ’speaking out’, Shameema.
Just like the abominable claims that Muslim chicks have to get about wearing curtains and tea-towels being “mandatory for Muslims” this meat guff is also garbage. Muslim chicks have been getting about with their locks flowing for over a millennium without bolts of lightning coming down from the ski. Same with meat. Australians need to tell them to sod off. This train ain’t slowing down for slow coaches who are going the wrong way anyway.
Mufti Greenfield speaks!
That is GRAND Mufti Greenfield to you.
Eudaemonion, yes it does constitute speaking out. It was that topic at that particular time. When you come out of the 2020 Summit and are asked about, thats what you would talk about.
Non-alcohol vegetarian is a common denominator in having to cater to a wide variety of choices and a sensible one as a caterer. If the meat had been dhabiha slaughtered, then Sikhs wouldn’t have been able to eat it (were there any Sikhs at the Summit? but you get my point).
When I give Islam sensitivity training talks to non-Muslim groups I recommend they provide non-alcohol vegetarian food, because how should they know - or be expected to know - the intricacies of Muslim dietary laws. Shi’is don’t eat any seafood except prawns, and fish with scales. Some Hanafis don’t eat prawns. Malikis don’t eat eels. Shafi’is and Hanafis differ over how many parts of the neck of an animal have to be slit for the slaughter to be valid… etc. etc. etc.
Of course, and the myriad of events I’ve been to, sometimes the vegie food is a little on the plain side. Airplanes are the worst. But, then our Prophet, peace be upon him, ate a largely vegetarian diet, and we should be grateful there are people to cater to us and invite us places and that we are not going to sleep with hungry stomachs like so many other people in the world.
Where in our constitution does it say Australia is a Christian country? And you can’t be sure if the slaughtering was done by some one of the ‘people of the Book’ or not…
Christmas is a public holiday. Easter is a public holiday.
It’s a Christian country.
Mick,
What i meant to say was whether or not ‘Christianity’ was the official state religion of the country, and as far as i know it is not, and I know of many Christians and those of any belief (or none) who strongly disagree with your assertion that Australia is or should be a Christian country.
IMHO Australia is a largely secular country. Something like less than 20% attend church regularly. Most people don’t give two hoots about religion.
Australia is indeed a secular state. Mick wrongly assumes that because it observes some Christian traditions then that makes it a Christian state. You could, however, make the argument that we are a Christian nation because our head of State is also the head of the Anglican church. That would be a bit silly given there are more Catholics than Anglicans in Oz, and even fewer of the Anglicans go to church. There aren’t many nations that could really be described as Christian in the way that, say, Saudi Arabia could be described as Islamic, apart from the Vatican of course.
” Australia is a Christian country so he should have just said bismillah and eaten the beef and chicken sandwiches.”
Even a joke like this explains the pathetic state the ummah is in.
“Abdul Rahman there are lots of scholars who say we can eat the meat in this country because it’s a Christian country and so the 3asl of the meat is that it’s halal. ”
Then they are not real scholars, but wahhabis spreading ignorance or those already mislead bythem and their “method” .
“There are also fatawa from reputable scholars on the permissibility of machine slaughtered meat”
Agreed, but there are sufficient problems with the way the whole process is implemented so that you cannot be sure which method of machine slaughter was used; some are halal and others are not and therefore if the food is halal or not.
We just like too many easy solutions like wiping over invalid socks. How is this pleasing to Allah?
At the end of the day we should not be striving to make the Religion difficult upon ourselves, I accept the opinion that this is a Christian state, and that the meat of Ahlul Kitab is halal for us as taught by the Prophet.
“Then they are not real scholars, but wahhabis spreading ignorance or those already mislead bythem and their “method””
Care to elaborate?
We also shouldn’t be be making the religion too easy, we are supposed to follow a middle path. Where does it stop? no hijab? join your prayers unlawfully? pre marital sex? wiping over socks that do not meet the requirements? say bismillah and then eat? prayer during menstruation?
How can you call it the food of Ahl al-kitab when you don’t even know who slaughtered it. Just because we live in a nominally Christian country, many so called Christians are atheists, and then there are those that subscribe to other belief systems clearly not Ahl al-Kitab, I’m sure you could even find Hindus working in these places. Even then, the animal has to be slaughtered with the name of God and several other requirements.
The problem so many of you face is that when you reject the reliable scholarship of the last 1400 years, what do you have to fall back on? Wahhabism or methods infected with the same misguidance where the guide is ones nafs. If I was to commit a sin, I prefer to actually believe it is sinful, at least then there is hope that I might repent.
“Care to elaborate?”
Wahhabis, liberals, at the end of the day there is little to distinguish them, just different costumes, the method is fundamentally the same.
What surprises me is that no one could even be bothered questioning if their so called vegetarian food is even really vegetarian and therefore halal. That’s what you get when you rely on kaffirs and the less religious to make your food, they have no understanding that halal is far more than just the animal products that you can see.
It’s funny that you equate wiping over socks with premarital sex.
Yes the deen of Allah is hilarious. The invalidity of one’s prayers is such a laughing matter, or any other such enormity.
Its also funny how you draw a conclusion without it being valid.
However these exchanges are probably not very beneficial to me so that is all from me.
As salam alaikum
sheesh, Abdul Rahman reading your recent posts makes me think you’re carrying a chip on your shoulder, no-one is mocking Islam it’s just your equating of wiping over socks with premarital sex a bit far fetched, sure invalidity of prayer is serious, but premarital sex is another thing…
Well if the Griffith Madrasas of Unitarianism is anything to go by Islamic scholarship is a contradiction in terms in this country.
Can you explain how comparing [not equating] two enormities is a “bit far fetched”?
We only have to look at what “educated” Muslims are promulgating to see that the limits set down in the sacred law are being overturned. This is far more serious than them just being ignored. When we cease to see sin as such we are in real trouble, when we say it is actually halal, where does that leave us?
“Can you explain how comparing [not equating] two enormities is a “bit far fetched”?”
If you read my post and Strider’s, you will notice it is the ‘equating’ of wiping socks with pre-marital sex that I saw interesting, and to answer your question obviously by no means is comparing two enormities far fetched, perhaps you could have re worded your sentence as not to confuse readers like me
Sorry for the obtuse style. It must be because I am one of those educated pigs.
“When we cease to see sin as such we are in real trouble, when we say it is actually halal, where does that leave us?’
Actually, in the same position of most of the rest of us - making decisions about right and wrong for ourselves (based on an untangelable jumble of biology, history, culture, and so on) and living as free people.
Such “freedom” is an illusion.
Well, there’s a very good argument that EVERYTHNG is an illusion, so that isn’t necessarily a problem. But even if we do reject solipsism, then no, it isn’t an illusion. Sure, we do have biological, historical, cultural restraints, but the most diginifed way to live is to attempt to be as free as possible. The least dignified way to live is to unquestioningly obey an arbitrary supernatural being.
‘Free as possible’ coming from a person who has an almost child-like faith in government?Surely you jest!
You seem to enjoy telling me what you think I think, don’t you? But you aren’t very good at it.
You’ve made your opposition to less government meddling and more personal freedom many, many times before Antish. So forgive me when I snort in derision at the words ‘Free As Possible’ coming out of your mouth.
Maybe I missed the disclaimer stating that ‘Free As Possible’ only applies to the arbitrary dictates of a ’supernatural being’ and not the arbitrary dictates of a collection of self-serving politicians and their bureaucrat underlings.
I think you’re seriously mixed-up about this, and I’d be interested in debating you on it. But this forum isn’t the place for it. Any suggstions?
Abdul Rahman: Point is there is actually evidence from the scholars for this point of view.
So it does not equate with premarital sex or tearing off the hijjab or what not, no need to over dramatize it.
I’ve heard both sides of the argument and chosen, and I wont cram which opinion I follow down any others throat.
#52 Please clarify?
Which scholars say it is permissible to eat meat potentially slaughtered by an atheist? The consensus of traditional scholars who adhere to the four madhaib which are the only legitimate source of fiqh is that this is haram. Meat is the only thing [note: not action] which is haram unless proven otherwise.
If you choose to seek guidance where it is not permitted to take it from then that is your choice but that does not mean I will stop warning people from doing such things.
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