I don’t think they prepare meals in the can, do they?
What I learned so far is this: Someone is alot brighter than me, because I never even thought of banning fish from the microwave. Damn straight that a sign will be going up soon on that one.
Ignoring the fact that most people don’t eat in the bathroom to begin with, the act of using a toilet contaminates it in the first place, regardless of what the person’s diet is.
Well, not being paid for work doesn’t mean you have a license to kill. You still are employed by them! You don’t go from ‘employed’ to ‘not employed’ with every swipe of the time clock! And it was their facility…etc.
Okay, can I have a shit sandwich in your place of business? I’m not risking your health or purity of religion. I’m not even being paid. Sure, you told me last week that my shit on a stick was unacceptable, but this isn’t shit on a stick, it’s just a shit sandwich. It’s not MY problem if it makes you and half your work force ill to their stomachs all day. You’re the religious nuts, not me.
When they say pork is ‘unclean,’ they mean exactly that. It’s not ‘sorta bad’ and it’s not ‘something we’d rather avoid.’ It’s considered unclean in every sense of the word. Its very presence in the cafeteria is a contamination risk. These are serious religious rules here.
I’ve also heard that Pepsi will fire its employees for consuming any sort of Coca Cola product while in uniform.
Ota, I don’t think your analogy works. People don’t eat shit sandwiches. Why are we putting this in a spoiler box?.
Now, if someone wanted to eat dog, that’s different. I guess I’d look at it that it grosses me out, but I don’t have to eat it.
How does one clean up “traf?” Could she not wipe down the counter with Windex and that’s it, or is there more to “cleansing?”
I guess the bottom line is she was fired for violating the employer’s religious beliefs. Would your reaction be different if a Christian company fired someone because they didn’t join the daily prayer circle?
I think it is important to remember that pork is not “unclean,” really. Muslims and Jews consider it “unclean” and choose not to eat it, but pork is a food product safely consumed by millions of people daily.
If someone refuses to eat something on religious or moral grounds, that’s fine. But when they start to impose their beliefs on me, I have a problem with it.
What if she had a separate lunch area, where she would not “contaminate” any one else?
Ivylass, the point I’m trying to make is that for those people who do keep kosher (and hallal), traf is the same thing as shit sandwiches. Something that is dangerous, disgusting and unclean to eat, or even be near food. I was putting it in spoiler boxes because I’ve known people who get upset with the idea of talking about coprophagy.
As for cleaning up after ‘traf’ I’m not certain. I keep neither kosher, nor hallal, and never have had to try to prepare meals following those restrictions.
Some people eat human placenta. What would your reaction be if someone across the table from you opened their tupperware container at lunch and had a large serving of it? I assume you would have a violently ill reaction, just like a lot of Muslims and Jews would have if someone ate pork in their presence.
The company had strong Muslim ties and had rules about not eating pork so as to not offend or possibly even sicken their employees. A woman chose to ignore the rule not once, but twice, and was fired for it. I fail to see how this is an issue.
If she were fired for not participating in a Christian prayer ciricle, I’d be with you. Honest. However, if she started singing ‘Satan rocks’ during that same Christian prayer circle, I’d think she could be fired.
How is it imposing their beliefs on her to refuse to let her eat pork at work? Seems to me simple consideration.
If someone were to eat pork on a plate in my kitchen, no food on any of my plates could be considered kosher (under some strict rules).
The point is that by bringing pork, even from home, into the office’s kitchen, she made everyone else’s food potentially non-hallal. She is causing them to violate their religion or not eat. In other circumstances I would say the Muslim employees needed to make their own arrangements, but as the employer clearly wants it to be a hallal lunch room, she is in the wrong.
And if one thoroughly cooks fecal matter it is nutrious, edible, and healthful. I won’t speak to it’s taste, but it’s no longer unclean.
I guess I just wonder why she felt the need to make an issue of it. She probably had/has some legal right to eat pig products at work, but why would she? If it were me, I’d probably just not eat pork, bacon, etc. at work and not worry about it. Just as a courtesy.
I had a coworker/friend who hated beets with a passion, she would literally gag at the sight of them. We would often go to the salad bar together at lunch. Once day she told me about her aversion to beets and asked if I could not get get beets on my salad. Now I really like beets, but out of courtesy, I skipped them. I could have beets another time.
Why couldn’t this woman just respect these people’s wishes not to be in the presence of what they consider unclean?
Eating porc in when you are with a Muslim can provoke reactions depending on the Muslim, your relationship with each other, how the Muslim sees the rules of the religion and how much he thinks he can ask people to repect them.
I don’t think that in every day interaction you can expect everyone you encounter to be aware of the rules of your religion.
I do think that if you work for a company where the owner is Muslim and most of the collegues are Muslim, you should be aware - be it only out of respect and politeness towards your employer and collegues) of a few things
- they might be offended
- they might feel a bit uneasy upto very uneasy
- they might be afraid that your porc touching the table where they also eat from makes that table unclean for them
- they might it indeed consider to be unclean an hence not permitted for them to use it (or whatever you touch while having porc at your fingers, you can stretch this very far)
- they might think that you do it to provoke them, to insult them or whatever bad meaning you can give at this when your employer has asked you already not to bring porc food to work.
I think it is point 5 we are looking at here.
The article is a bit foolish in tearing stupid partriotism and “religious intolerance” into the whole situation (overlooking very ridiculously that if the company was so intolerant they would not have hired a non Muslim in the first place).
However, when the article states correctly that there is no writting agreement on this specific rule, I don’t think the company can construct a solid case.
Their arguments are rather limited. Yet when they really are pushed to go to court they can easily find a few arguments to contruct a case.
Salaam. A
Otaluki Your obssession with coprophagia is troubling. I’d say the eating of dog or horse would be a better analogy.
Re Cleansing
I may be wrong in this. So far, most of what I know of halal laws matches very well with kosher laws (different things are banned and different blessings are said, but the laws are the same in many respects)
So, for the sake of argument, let’s switch from a halal office to a kosher one.
Standard washing procedures do not remotely meet the requirements for purification.
The table the woman ate at is unclean. Depending on exactly what it is made out of, it may not be possible to purify it. It must be thrown out and replaced.
Did the woman use a cafetaria tray? It is unclean. If it has been washed and returned to the stack, then all the trays and everything that may have been washed with them must be considered unclean.
Does the cafeteria provide metal utensils? Did she use any? If they were washed and returned to the bins, all the utensils and everything that may have come in contact with them or been washed with them is unclean.
If it’s just a small office with a small room with a fridge, table, sink and microwave, did she use any of those things? If she stored the sandwich in the fridge, the fridge and everything in it may be unclean (it depend on how strict an interpretation of the law is followed and, seriously, how the sandwich was packaged.). Did she reheat the pizza in the microwave? Then, the microwave is unclean
Eve First (Though I may be wrong as IANA MD, biologist, or chemist) I very much doubt that pork would be recognizably present in human stool unless the individual had massively overindulged in pork. Second, Islam considers urine and feces to be unclean on their own, but in a different subcategory. I’m sure you know that wiping is done with the left hand. Eating is done with the right. Whatever the workers’ diets, their stools would be considered unclean by Islamic law
Okay, the ONLY Google match for “Rising Star telecommunication” is this PDF file, one of the stranger things I’ve come across on the web.
Page 51 contains references to Rising Star Telecommunications and staff, yet the focument is entitled
I really haven’t figured out how they got from that title to some of the things below:
That woman was working for a batshit-crazy employer. Not to say there’s anything illegal about that, IANA HR expert.
It’s the analogy my father always told me. <shrug> Granted, it was chosen to be used here with malice of forethought to be as disgusting as possible. But, as disturbing as dog or horse might be, in the eyes of most gentiles, they don’t spread the sense of contamination that coprophagic meals do.
What’s so hard to understand about “eating pork in front of people who choose to keep hallal or kosher is extremely offensive and disturbing.”
Doesn’t mean, necessarily, that this woman won’t win her lawsuit.
I just, honestly, don’t see why it’s such a difficult thing to avoid bringing pork to work to eat. Especially if most of your co-workers are going to view it as extremely disturbing.
IANAL, but I think the troublesome bit for the employer may be that the policy is unwritten. I think they’d be on stronger ground if they required newly hired employees to sign a document agreeing to the ban on pork. Someone mentioned the policy at Coca-Cola Enterprises against eating products from KFC, Taco Bell or Pizza Hut in the plant, but I suspect that Coca-Cola Enterprises is at least smart enough to spell this out formally.
DocCathode
It all depends on the Muslim(s) involved and how they interprete the hallal laws Better said: which scholar’s advise they follow in this and/or how they are brought up or how they themselves want to inteprete it.
You can be in my company and even if you order a pig’s head on a plate, I shall not be offended and I shall not run away screaming that our table, my food, the whole place and even the cloths I’m wearing are now unclean… And next take a dive in the most nearby pool to purify myself.
Nevertheless there are scholars who tell people seeking advise about a workplace or a place where they shop or whatever, that even being in the same location as an item that is haram food, is forbidden.
They tell people that they can not take a job in a place where porc or alcohol is sold or handled. Even when packed so that they never have to really touch it or even when they have a job in a whole other department or as a cashier
Needless to say that I am most ready to point out to them that they should read Al Qur’an and get it in their heads that they themselves act and preach against the spirit of Islam.
They limit people in their job choice. Which implies that they first of all limit them in earning the money to provide for their family. Which implies that the scholar himself is in transgression because by his intervention he prevents an other Muslim to obey one of the very clear rules of Al Qur’an.
Muslims who must eat or work in an environment that can be considered as unclean when it comes to the rules of halal food, should take in mind that they are not the cause of the disruption. If you can’t avoid eating where people eat food that is haram, you have no guilt in that yourself.
You can not command Muslim employes to go outside for their meal whenever a non-Muslim employe comes up with something that is haram.
You can not command a Muslim to refuse a job when he comes to you for advise and while you know that he need the job because of the money.
To provide by all means for the needs of your family is a specific and very clear command in Islam.
Salaam. A
Wasn’t there a case in Australia where a Muslim family ordered a pizza from Pizza Hut, and it arrived with pepperoni on it by accident? The family ate it, then sued, saying that Pizza Hut owed them a free trip to Mecca so they could be cleansed.
IIRC, imans were like WTF 
, saying it was an accident, they ate the pork unknowing, and that in the eyes of Allah they were not befouled.
I guess my question is, how far does the employer get to go in dictating their religious beliefs to employees who do not practice their beliefs? Is it because they knew the woman was eating pork and contaminating their work area? What happens if a Muslim sits on a park bench where someone has just finished eating a ham sandwich?
You cannot hire and fire on the basis of religious beliefs. Therefore, I think the employer, knowing they were hiring a non-Muslim employee, should have made reasonable accomodations for her eating habits, if they would be offensive to the other Muslims.
Otherwise, we’re back to refusing to hire non-Muslims, and that’s a whole 'nuther debate.
Interesting viewpoints, people. Thanks for the insight!