That story makes the mother sound like an asshole, to be honest.
I agree! She left her husband (my friend) a few years after the ostrich fiasco. Their house was furnished with nice stuff her grandmother left her. When she left her husband and two kids she hired a mover to take all the furniture (as inheritance she owned it outright). My friend had to run to Sears that evening and buy mattresses for his kids to sleep on.
I remember you telling that story. So the ostrich incident wasn’t an outlier.
As soon as I saw the ostrich story , I wondered if that was the same woman.
She did lots of crazy shit over the years. On the positive end of things, my friend married a really great woman and adopted her daughter, who has Down Syndrome and lives with them.
And therefore one should assume such moral/religious beliefs don’t exist or aren’t worth the inconvenience of telling the guest the food wasn’t compliant?
I already cited the Bible as one example of a “strange religion” where a specific ritual is prescribed regardless of intent. Baptism is a more prominent example of ritual purification for a “sin” that has nothing to do with intent. Not all religious rules and remedies are based on the concepts of sin or intent. Plenty of religions associate menstration with ritual impurity. A person who accidentally eats meat during Lent may take no further action than acknowleding the mistake during prayer and remembering to inform the chef / more carefully scrutinize ingredients next time, but these are actions. And if you don’t tell, these actions won’t be taken.
~Max
The reason for keeping quiet has nothing to do with inconvenience , nor does it have anything to do with assuming that the moral/religious beliefs don’t exist. If you believe that the person should always be told simply because it’s the truth, then you should just say that rather than talking about assuming the beliefs don’t exist or inconvenience to the person who served the food.
Here you are saying, ‘don’t tell me because it would make me feel worse and I can’t do anything about it’. That’s fine. But only because you told me so.
But over here is Johnny, who says ‘do tell me because I would want to know so I can make the appropriate prayers to God’.
Now I’m the host and Kim is at my table. I don’t know whether Kim would want to know the meal she just ate isn’t halal. Do I assume her views are more like yours, she prefers bliss, and not tell her? Do I assume she would want to know and tell her?
I would tell Kim. Why wouldn’t you?
~Max
It’s not a sin to eat meat during Lent. It’s just something some people do, as a traditional asceticism/fast to prepare for the Easter feast. Fasting, prayer and almsgiving are the traditions of Lent. How you interpret those is up to you.
First of all, I’m wondering how Kim is at your table and you have only found out that she keeps halal after she’s eaten. 
But about why wouldn’t I tell her - because either way depends on an assumption and your assumption is no better or worse than mine.
That is the story given by the OP and the title of the thread…
As for the assumption, my position is that it’s worse to assume they would prefer bliss since this shows disrespect to their religious beliefs.
~Max
I know that it makes no actual difference to the same or greater extent they know that it does make a difference. I don’t have to accept their religious belief that it makes an actual difference.
I don’t respect the basis of the restrictions. That has nothing to do with respecting that individual though. I don’t respect such restrictions. I do respect the right of people to obey whatever restrictions they want.
No, I’m saying the ikely result will be greater harm than if I didn’t tell. Of course I would prefer to be open and honest about the matter, and feel some guilt for not doing so, but that is my problem, not theirs.
If I tell them they may then feel guilt for something that they did not do. They are likely to feel resentment toward me for telling them because I think most people do not want to hear about such things that would have no affect on them whatsoever if they didn’t know. It could easily end the friendship and create discord that would not have otherwise existed and serves no valuable purpose. It could have many undesirable effects on them just starting from the unnecessary distraction in their life. It is not worth the gamble that someone will act reasonably in this situation. It’s not like they had told me previously that they want to know if they violated their dietary restrictions unintentionally. Even in that case I would have said I would not guarantee that I would do as they asked.
Correct.
I did nothing wrong. I used due diligence to maintain their dietary restrictions, whatever happened was outside of my control. I do not see any way in which the world would be a better place for my telling them, not for me, not for them, not for anyone or anything else.
As for this example, I might remind Johnny but really it’s up to him to pray or not. It’s not quite the same thing as whether you serve food that is halal. On the other hand, if Johnny is out with your child and Johnny orders something that he knows does not conform to the religious restrictions, that’s again on him.
this discussion reminds me of a joke I once read. A Catholic priest and a rabbi are on a bus. The priest asks the rabbi, “is it still a requirement of your faith to not eat pork?”. The rabbi replies, “yes indeed you are correct.” The priest then goes on to ask, “it seems like such a strange rule…have you ever eaten pork”. The rabbi puts down his book and says “yes, I am ashamed to admit that one time in a moment of weakness, I did given in to curiosity and ate pork.” A minute later the rabbi asks the priest, “Father, is it still a requirement of your faith that you remain celibate?”. The priest replies, “yes, indeed, very much so.” Then the rabbi asks him, “It seems like such a harsh rule…have you ever given in to temptation?”. After a moment the priest sighs and responds slowly, “yes, one one occasion, in a profound moment of human frailty, I succumbed to the temptation of a young woman.” There is a long pause between them and then the rabbi nods knowingly and says “It’s a lot better than pork, isn’t it?”
By telling, you are also making an assumption, just a different one than the person who keeps their mouth shut. Sometimes we find ourselves mired in ethical dilemmas regardless of what we do or don’t do; life is like that.
Personally, I see differing nuances between a situation where one is aware that someone unknowingly ingested a forbidden substance, fed to them by a third party; and a situation where one is the party themself who is guilty of accidentally serving a forbidden food.
If I’m aware of someone else’s mistake, I should weigh the circumstances of both the server and the eater. In the situation I described earlier in this thread, I felt that the pain Sally would have felt outweighed the value of telling the Muslims.
But, I later fed one of the same Muslims pork by accident - I thought I was giving him beef sausage and only weeks later found out it had pork in it. In that case, I did tell him, because I was the person who did the wrong thing. (He wasn’t happy about it, but he forgave me on the spot.)
I think I understand/understood your position, we just disagree as to what “respect for the individual” entails. I think it extends to religious beliefs and requires me to generally recognize religious or spiritual harm that I don’t personally believe has any basis in reality.
To wit, if you see a religious person accidentally violate some vow or prohibition, and you don’t tell them because you do not respect the religious beliefs which justify the vow or prohibition, I think you do not respect the person.
~Max
I agree on all points and would do the same. Praying before the meal was just an example to show the same logic applied in different situations. The last example, where the rule is telling the chef about dietary restrictions, was an analogy to the original scenario.
~Max
I disagree because my religious belief tells me that I don’t have to respect every isolated aspect of a person in order to respect them. I have a great deal of respect for the people who maintain religious beliefs like restricted diets, far more than people who maintain a set of optional religious beliefs that they can pick and choose from situationally. But it’s their discipline and strength of their belief that I respect, not the belief itself.
I also want to narrow down what we are talking about. If your religious belief is that I, a person who does not share your belief, am required to tell you about something like this then I have much less respect for that belief than if it only imposed requirements on you. You are making this a situation where if I don’t practice your belief then I am disrespecting you. I’m not going to observe your dietary restriction myself, and I don’t believe you should expect me to.
Yes, to me that is only a shadow of respect. You describe recognition. There’s no deference. Without both it’s not respect. IMO.
~Max
So you think I have to observe you dietary restrictions myself? Are you saying you don’t respect my religious belief?