Depending on how you define the word non-halal, most of us will tend to take or believe that non-halal food are food that serves with pork. However, we could also apply the word non-halal to other religion too, if we wish to. While non-halal food for Muslim is pork, non-halal food for Buddhist or Hindu, on the other hand, is beef and non-halal food for a vegetarian then would be meat.
Therefore, if we were to serve only the halal food in Malaysia, it might end up serving nothing for our fellow guests of different religion and beliefs. Well, at least we can still serve vegetarian food to our guest, since every religion does not forbid vegetables.
And Malaysia might end up selling nothing other than vegetables, considering that we have a population with different religions and beliefs.
How funny is that...
Sekolah Kebangsaan Seri Mega, Kuala Lumpur
Few weeks ago, the headmaster of Sekolah Kebangsaan Seri Mega, Kuala Lumpur sends out letters, dated July 14, to parents asking them not to let their children to bring non-halal food into school. The problem is, the letter does not specify what is considered non-halal, pointed by a parent. I supposed, it is food that contains pork which somehow indicates that Islam in on the move again.
Why? It is because the letter also stated that non-Muslim students are forbidden from using utensils in the canteen and dumping food into waste bins.
I have problem with this. While I have no say on the utensils like forks and spoons since these are owned by the private caterers operating at the canteen, hence not a public property, I find it difficult to accept on the canteen and waste bins. Non-muslim students cannot use the canteen and waste bins?
Canteen is a proper place for students to eat their lunch. Waste bins is a proper place for students to throw the remaining waste or rubbish. These are public properties of the school, since the school is built by using the tax-payers money, and therefore, every students from that school are eligible to use these facilities. And by "students", I mean students in general without the concern of religion.
Tainted with the non-halals
The arguments continued for utensils and waste bins. If a student eats non-halal food with the utensils, it will not be able to be used by Muslim students. The same for waste bins, if the bins contain non-halal wastages, then it will be difficult for the rubbish collector to collect the rubbish.
A letter from Tai Lo Chin to Malaysiakini highlighted this, excerpts:
Just to stretch the argument for consistency, if for example non-Muslim children cannot eat non- halal food or use halal utensils in schools, is there a difference if they have already eaten non- halal food at home, and with morsels of non-hahal food in their mouths or between their teeth, later use halal utensils at the school canteen?
Are they supposes to brush, floss and rinse their teeth before they go to school to make sure they don’t taint the halal forks, spoons and utensils?
Or are they supposed not to eat non-halal food at home as well?
Well pointed. How clean is clean? Does brushing, flossing and rinsing will completely clean up your tainted teeth and smell and turn you back to a halal person?
A letter to Malaysiakini then highlighted the proper way for cleaning these, excerpts:
The way to cleanse this dirt is by cleaning with water seven times and one of these cleaning cycles should also include cleaning with earth.
This is specifically prescribed by Islam as contained in the Hadith.
See, you have to actually wash it seven times with combination of earth or soil. Now, can I ask why seven times? Why cannot be five, six, eight, ten, fourteen, etc... times? It seems to me that washing for seven times (not more or less) will give a magic chant to that instrument to become clean, or halal again?
My question is what's the logic behind this?
Back to waste bins. While I understand the difficulty for the rubbish collector, couldn't the school prepares two separate waste bins where one is for non-halal and another for halal and employ a non-Muslim to collect the non-halal waste bins? I was wondering if the only solution they could think of is to forbid the students from using the waste bins. Do they have any implicit meaning or desire for that?
I could picture that the same would happen if the majority of the Malaysia's population are not from Islam but from other religion. That is to say banning non-majority religion's students from bringing the non-halal food of that majority religion food cause the parents of the non-majority religion to object on it. From here, I believe that forbidding is not a healthy solution for a country with different religious beliefs like Malaysia.
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