Comments on: Mosque offended by alcohol & roast pig…in New York City

By: Peter A

Peter A — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:00:05 +0000

You think common sense would lead muslim immigrants to the conclusion that if they succeed in making everyone in the US/Germany/UK wherever follow the same laws they had back in Pakistan or Egypt than very soon the US/Germany/UK will become just like the shithole they just left. Either they really don’t get the connection between economic growth and culture (likely), or they don’t care because they figure they’ll find a way to be on top of the shithole.

By: Caledonian

Caledonian — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:47:36 +0000

I don’t know what the catalyst for the change was.

Attitudes towards seafood in Britain changed when pollution and overharvesting made specific types of food scarce.
Oysters and lobsters, which were once so plentiful that they were considered the food of the poor, became valuable commodities once they became rarer. It has nothing to do with the quality of the food, and everything to do with perceived status.

By: razib

razib — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:06:48 +0000

But there are sound reasons
you can always construct reasons post facto. i invite you go to look at hindu nationalist websites for a full panoply of reasons. the question is the cost vs. the benefit. if you have a religious taboo, cost vs. benefit is not an issue, so really the reasons aren’t the primary point, it’s the religious injunction. which to some extent is all that different from non-religious taboos. the main issue as evident in hindu, muslim and jewish food taboos is that when these taboos become religious they tend to be subject to “bidding wars” and get more and more extreme. muslims are least restrained so far from what i know among the three classes noted, though it really is retarded when somali checkout clerks at target won’t *touch* bologna slice packages.

By: ElamBend

ElamBend — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:57:08 +0000

100 years ago lobster was servants food and some household servants would even stipulate limits to how much lobster they could be served in their contracts.
I don’t know what the catalyst for the change was.

By: miko

miko — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:00:34 +0000

“Religions in general are really pushy about trying to get everyone else to follow their in-religion rules. Especially people outside of their religion.”
Note that this is not what this situation is about…it’s not that they don’t want people to eat pork, it’s that they don’t want to see other people eat pork. It still amounts to being whiney babies, of course, but it is much less offensive than religious nuts who DO want everyone to believe and behave as they do, or claim to.
Making up rational reasons for ancient food taboos is a fun parlor game, but is kind of beside the point. Today the function is clearly social cohesion and exclusionism, or you believe magical/irrational things about food. Harder to explain are the taboos like insects vs. crustaceans–these are cultural, but do not seem to have rational, religious, or social bases.

By: Sammy

Sammy — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:56:53 +0000

Wow so this is a scienceblog?
I think it is definitely unreasonable for the Mosque to ask others to refrain.
But there are sound reasons for the prohibition on consumption of swine meat. The pig does not have functional sweat glands and pretty much eats anything, including its own. Now there are certain toxins present in food/envirnment which we and most animals sweat off, yet in pigs this is not the case. In fact there has been quite a few recalls of swine products in Europe due to dioxin levels.
As a muslim you are allowed to keep dogs only if there is a need for them ie you are a farmer or blind. At least you can say Muslims are not contributing to the puppy mill industry and ergo euthnizations of millions of dogs per year.

By: Mike Chelen

Mike Chelen — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:46:06 +0000

Religious superstition is unfortunately present in so many popular belief systems. In many states for example liquor cannot be purchased on Sundays.

By: Siamang

Siamang — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:49:44 +0000

If your religion tells you not to eat animal x, I have a great solution for you: Don’t eat it!
YAY!
Religions in general are really pushy about trying to get everyone else to follow their in-religion rules. Especially people outside of their religion.

By: Prasad

Prasad — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:43:53 +0000

“prasad, i guarantee you that if you eat dog meat in public in the united states you might get insulted, but you won’t get killed. that’s what i call not moronic”
Beef is publicly eaten in the Indian states of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. No one gets killed. Pork is consumed in Indonesia.
These are the countries I am familiar with. Of course, these are hindu and muslim majority countries and your perspective/ knowledge, coming from a christian (or, if u prefer, “protestant”) majority country, is necessarily different. I do buy your argument that we can have way too much norm tracking in the name of a multi cultural society.
But there can be far too little of it too, as evidenced in your argument that minorities should STFU. Surely there are more nuances possible, as shown e.g. by Britain

By: csrster

csrster — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:11:37 +0000

This is a wonderful example of integration into the American melting pot. These muslims have only been in New York a few years and already they’re whining, complaining, and threatening to sue the pants off anyone and everyone.

By: razib

razib — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:33:53 +0000

joshua, i retract the assertion about vegetarianism provisionally. can’t confirm through a cite right now, and don’t have time to look a lot longer.

By: Melykin

Melykin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:16:38 +0000

>”…dogs, in many parts of the world most dogs are “pariah dogs.” not cute & cuddly.”
——————-
But they are still dogs and therefore capable of great loyalty and affection towards humans. Some American soldiers have befriended dogs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in some cases have brought them back to America. See “Operation Baghdad Pup” for stories about the rescue of some of these so-called pariah dogs.
http://www.spcai.org/baghdad-pups.html
Telling people they can’t keep dogs!
Islam is truly an unpleasant religion.

By: razib

razib — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:46:52 +0000

no, i mean hassidic. i know the difference. looking for the reference now.

By: Joshua Zelinsky

Joshua Zelinsky — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:39:59 +0000

Razib,
Regarding your claim about vegetarianism. I’d be very surprised if any substantial number of chassidim were doing that. Do you mean charedim? Charedi- ultra-orthodox. Not the same thing as chassidic which is a subset. I’d be surprised to hear charedim doing that also but not as surprised.
In general, the ultra-orthodox perceive vegetarianism as something that those horrible Modern Orthodox or (gasp) Reform Jews do (in their mind pretty much anyone who isn’t shomer shabbat is Reform). I’d be very surprised if you can find almost any ultra-orthodox Jews who have become vegetarian.

By: dasdasdasd

dasdasdasd — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:31:37 +0000

If anyone ever tells you that religion isn’t fucking up humanity, they’re lying.

By: razib

razib — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:04:44 +0000

prasad, i guarantee you that if you eat dog meat in public in the united states you might get insulted, but you won’t get killed. that’s what i call not moronic.

By: Bob

Bob — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:02:12 +0000

RE: Food Taboos
You all seem to be forgetting what might be the biggest reason for food taboos: group cohesion. *We* don’t eat $animal, only those people-who-are-barely-people-because-they aren’t-us eat $animal. I would imagine a lot of religious and cultural customs are there simply as an artificial mechanism for group bonding. They let you identify other group members, make the other folks look bad and make your group look more pious for following those rules. Not drinking coffee lets Mormons feel all smug and superior to their non-Mormon colleagues.
I don’t drink alcohol, simply because my family did so so very rarely that it was not something I consider a normal activity. So I get to feel all superior to the drinkers. Sure, I can claim it’s because alcoholism is on both sides of my family. Or because I was such a nerd that I never hung out with the cool kids who got drunk on the weekends, but realistically it has become a way for me to be smug and morally superior. Same as other cultures or religions.
When it comes to cultural food types, it is mainly simply what you are used to. I wouldn’t eat honeyed locusts or horse because I didn’t grow up in a culture that did. Nor would I eat horse, cat, dog, lamb or guinea pig as I’ve had all of them as pets. In fact, one of the reasons my mother stopped raising chickens for food was because my brother and I started naming them. Killing, cleaning, and de-feathering also played a factor. Plucking a chicken is not a fun way to spend time and if you’ve ever missed a couple of feathers and smelled them burning in the oven it is not something you want to repeat.
In America, the bias against eating things like squirrel, possum, raccoon, and other “varmints” is based on class/caste. Those animals are only eaten by “hillbillies”, “rednecks”, or whatever you want to call people on the lower end of the rural economic scale. See Beverly Hillbillies for examples of humor built on this.

By: Rabbi Arie Chark

Rabbi Arie Chark — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:49:05 +0000

Food taboos occur for various reasons. It is a mistake to suggest that the “validity” of the taboo be rooted in scientific reasoning. I can, however, use valid science to provide valid reasoning for pork taboos in Islam and Judaism. Whether or not this reasoning is valid everywhere is another matter; inasmuch as Khan is an Indian/Pakistani name, at least in origin, I cannot say that the reasoning I provide would be valid on the subcontinent. It is certainly valid in SW Asia and in N Africa from the Horn westward.
Porcine animals use a lot of water. They also produce waste that is toxic to land. Drought is a very real concern in Afrasia even today, never mind in Biblical times. On this matter I would urge you to treat the Bible as history, not as literature, especially in translations such as the King James Version. The best translation in English is by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, G!d Rest his righteous soul.
With respect to dogs, Razib is quite correct. Domesticated dogs as pets are quite recent and evolved from N European farms keeping dogs, who are very territorial and this reliable to guard against other dogs — in this case wolves. This is one of the reasons that Belgian shepherds, German shepherds, and Arctic breeds such as Samoyeds are so similar to both wolves and each other.
Being a Canadian, I am quite familiar with domesticated wolves. This most often happens if the wolf breeds with a domesticated dog such as a Samoyed. This hybrid is massive and gorgeous. As a child I had a purebred Samoyed named Snowball who was so large, without any wolf at all, that he could pull a small sled with both me and my sister in it.

By: Brian

Brian — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:38:13 +0000

I’ve found the horsemeat taboo in the US kind of amusing. There’s some politicians in Texas who are really promoting the ban on selling horsemeat. Why?
Cruelty.
My issue with that is how is killing and eating a horse any different from killing and eating a pig? Or a cow?
For the most part, I think the US taboos deal more with companion animals (and vermin, too). But I’m not familiar with the historical argument for/against horsemeat.

By: KingM

KingM — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:31:28 +0000

>It might sometimes be partly about giving people a stupid rule just to see who will break it and who will follow it.
See Mormons and coffee.