Did you have a piggy bank as a kid? Would you give one to your kid, nephew, niece?
In reading a bit online, I glean that it might be fine, as it is the eating of pig that is forbidden, but a depiction of a pig is not. There was a flap in England a few years ago about a bank supposedly kowtowing to Muslim sensibilities by taking piggy banks out of their ads. I can’t really assess the degree of truth in that. So, what’s the Straight Dope.
If I gave a Jewish or Muslim kid a cute piggy bank, would the parents be insulted or think WTF?
No there is nothing offensive in the piggy bank, but it is questionable where this idea was read because the story was a fake made by anti muslim groups and promoted by racist organisations in europe, mostly among the anglophones.
I don’t think that’s quite right. I’m trying to get a sense of the range of acceptance piggy banks might have for 1) Jews and 2) Muslims. Might guess is that there might be a level of devoutness that might, in fact, color the acceptance of giving a child an object resembling a pig. The preliminary look on line before opening this lead me to believe that that was the case. I wish it was as easy as yes/no. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, so can you move this back into GD?
I’m not seeing enough of a debate here to punt this back to GD. The answers so far seem pretty straightforward and factual. It’s probably best to leave it here for now.
If you don’t get enough factual information to answer the question to your satisfaction, then maybe we can consider a move to IMHO to allow for more speculation and opinion as well as allowing folks to chime in with their personal experiences on the topic.
I’m frankly curious here…why would the OP even consider this is a viable story? Is there some sacred element to the pig in Islam that I’m unaware of? They share the prohibition against eating pork, but I have never seen anything which indicates a similar prohibition against living porkers.
I’m a casher in a store owned by Jews, with a Hassidic Jew as a manager, and a large Jewish customer base. We sell piggy banks.
A small aside: We are required to wear red shirts (insert Star Trek reference here). One day I came in and the place was extremely busy. I took my shirt out of my tote bag, put it on and went to work.
A Muslim complained to the manager about “seeing a woman in a state of undress.”
An article in * Mad, * illustrated by Bob Clarke, showed a piggy bank with a smirk on the pig’s face and the word “kosher” on the side in Hebrew letters.
In the song “Show Me the Way to Go Home” the lyrics mention a pig that wanders into a Jewish boarding house! Well, Piggy will be safe there.
Piggy banks are fine for Muslims and Jews, but Winnie-the-Pooh is off-limits because of Piglet.
If you’re concerned about gifting someone with an offensive piggy bank, here’s an alternative that fits in nicely with current events in the Middle East.
Primary school in Pakistan (95% Muslim at the time) in the early 1970s we had elephant banks issued by the in-school bank (an actual branch of Grindlays Bank, whose logo was a dapper dancing elephant). Then both the schools and the banks were nationalized. The next year we got plain clay pots in the form of Turkish/Arab/Iranian oil jars, referencing those in Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves story, which was in our readers. Not bad, except you had to break them to get your money out. The ceramic elephant could be opened with a special tool (or a desperate 7 year old with a screwdriver).
We also had the three little goats story, instead of three little pigs. Pig was simply something that was not in the vocabulary.
Take this all with a grain of salt. My mother says that much if what I remember from 40 years ago is fanciful.
