Piety is in the Meat
Brother Umar has a post that I found to be funny (in a not so funny kind of way). The thought amongst many converts think that their cultural foods (even when bought in an Islamic ‘Halal’ meat store) should be abandoned. I can remember being berated by an African-American Muslim for my liking of sandwiches. He accused me of trying to hang on to jahiliyyah.
As Umar mentioned, you will find couples (in which BOTH the husband AND wife are converts) where the woman, even if she knows how to cook American foods, thinks she must learn how to cook “Muslim” Foods (i.e, Foods of Pakistani and Arabs) and they eat Pakistani or Arab food everyday thinking that this is the Sunnah. I can also remember instances of brothers bragging of having not eaten a hamburger in years. This is why brothers feel like they have to sneak off to eat at KFC or McDonald’s and feel like they are doing something wrong. Or if they eat hamburgers at home they think they have weak Iman.
Meanwhile, in the context of the previous discussion, you have a middleclass college educated individual that has converted who is sitting there critically analyzing the situation and realizes how stupid all of this is…
Link: When an American Couple only eats Arab/Pakistani food
*UPDATE: Brother Hood has a post on his blog regarding this subject: Halal White People Food
**UPDATE 2: Brother Rashad has blogged on this topic: Cultural Hijrah, What’s the deal?
***UPDATE 3: What have you been eating?
Filed under: Convert Issues, Sloganism over Reality, The Culture of Denial and Pretense
Don’t forget that some brothers adopt a foreign accent and start speaking broken immigrant English!!!
LOL, This is my husbands pet peeve. I am officially banned from making pakistani food.
Good post, check out the website link.
Ahh yes….MEAT! The Hujjah of the Deen and Iman. The difference between belief and disbelief. The backbone of any successful new Muslim program. MEAT! Don't underestimate it's importance. No Sirree…if a brother eats questionable meat…then the rest of his Islam has to be suspect.
Obviously i'm being overly dramatic and sarcastic but unfortunately even though it goes unsaid, this is the extreme attitude some brothers have about meat. I mean its a "with us or against us" attitude. I have nothing against any brother who chooses to only eat Islamically slaughtered meat or who only eats food prepared in an Arab or Pakistani way…but when these brothers tell new Muslims (many on the day that they take shahadah) that they should all of a sudden throw anyway any non-Muslim supermarket meat, stop eating KFC or McDonalds or whatever they have been eating and enjoying for years, this becomes an instant faith-shaker to the new convert. Most already knew going in that they were finished with pork and then all of a sudden they're told that the Big Mac is just as haraam as the McRib! I have much MUCH more to say on this particular subject but I'm hungry so I gotta run to Burger King…
this problem never existed amongst Muslims then who pursued Perfection(Ihsan) in deen unlike today where the contemporary Muslims chiefly pursue Purity.
Don’t look at your form, however ugly or beautiful.
Look at love, and at the aim of your quest.
O you whose lips are parched, keep looking for water.
Those parched lips are proof that eventually you will
reach the source.
– Mathnawvi, III: 1438/1440
“Breathing Truth - Quotations from Jalaluddin Rumi”
These people are missing the forest for the trees. The idea that one must loose their own culture when they turn to Islam, is, actually, unIslamic. It is like saying Islam is not compatible with all peoples, in all places, at all times. It most certain is the universal religion, time people remember that!
As I said in Umar’s post….It’s all about Mexican food anyway. There has never been a more perfect form of food developed, though admittedly halal soul food sounds pretty swank.
Salaam ‘alaikum
Mexican food is tops. I’m also on a Indian food ban, but it’s b/c even the mild stuff is spicy for my husband. So I’ve been learning Southern Italian cooking most recently, although Mexican and Tex-Mex is everyone’s favorite.
The meat issue is important — it’s a Command of Allah in His Book, but it has to be presented to new converts with wisdom. It took the Sahaba 23 years to learn the diyn, so why would anyone expect a convert to be perfect overnight? But this attitude is present in the community, from other converts as well as lifelong Muslims.
The way we sometimes address priorities with new converts is a little hinky anyway. A Muslim woman is given pamphlets, books, articles, and chats about the importance of hijab, but only a book and a few words about salat. What is more important? La howla wa la quwatta illah billah. There is a tendency to address the exterior things, the social things — like hijab, music, artwork — before the importance of prayer. What does it matter if you have a brother who, for example, isn’t listening to music, but he’s also not praying right or maybe he’s not praying on wudhu every time b/c he doesn’t know?
UZ, couldn;t agree more
I don’t think the halal food thing is a big deal. There were definite benefits. It’s part of the Muslim discipline. Being conscientious about what one is putting into one’s body is very important - just like praying throughout the day even when its “inconvenient.” My family was down with the dietary laws in a serious way - but they didn’t hate on other folks who weren’t. It was what we chose to do. We ate well and in moderation, and protected our arteries, cholesterol levels and blood pressures. We learned about the way animals are treated in our country before they are slaughtered; we practiced compassion for all of Allah’s creations. I haven’t been a Muslim for a number of years, but this is a practice I am taking up again because I have tried the eat meat whenever thing and I’m realizing the previous way was better. One of the many things Islam taught me was mindfulness.
What have you been eating?
I caught sight of this entry on the blog Jowhara’s Chamber about the state of Muslim-run restaurants. The author explains how she passed a restaurant at which she had become quite a regular, stopped as she fancied an ice-cream, and…
[...] Umar, Rashad, Hood, Umm Zaid and I have all recently written about the ”Muslim foods” issue and the way that many converts believe that they must adopt Arab foods in order to be a good Muslim. However, according to this story, it seems that some extremists in Iraq have taken thinking a bit further. In a bizarre example of Iraq’s creeping “Talibanisation”, militants visited falafel vendors a fortnight ago, telling them to pack up their stalls by today or be killed [...]
I came across this post purely by accident. I’m a British Muslim and was looking for halaal food sites in Bulgaria for my brother who’s gonna be there for a week. Read some of the posts with a wry smile, especially the bit about eating sandwiches! All I can say is that if the meat is halaal then it doesn’t matter whether its chinese, indian, mexican, french, italian, whatever, one should thank Allah for his bounties, say bisnillah and tuck in. If you know that the Big Mac or Whopper or KFC isn’t halaal then dont eat it. Its as simple as that. People shouldn’t not eat permissable meat that has not been slaughtered in Allah’s name. My folks are Indian but my wife and I will cook food from anywhere, I get pretty sick of curry everynight!! My sister in law is an English revert and she sure makes great shepherd’s pie, tho dont know if you yanks have that over there!!
[...] I was just checking out some other blogs, when I came across the discussion of Halal food, Br. Tariq Nelson Piety is in the Meat and Br. Umar Lee When an American Couple only eats Arab/Pakistani food [...]
LOL! This is hilarious in light of the fact that if you go into MacDs, Hardees, BK, KFC, Pizza Hit, Dunkin’ Donuts, Chilis or Applebees here in Doha, 95% of the patrons will be Arabs. But then you’ll find the ex=pats lined up at the shawarma joints so I guess it all works out in the end….
I am mssing some Taco Bell, though ;-)))
asalamu alaikum
going through all the posts all the blogs about this issue…and to be honest I didn’t know it was this bad. People are leaving their cultural foods to be more islamic? If I love hot dogs and pizza that makes me less of a muslim? interesting….
Muslimah, that is because there is a race to see who can dump the most ‘haraam’. there is some sort of love of torturing oneself with many
This post is so funny because it just made me realize something. When I first married my sorry-azz ex-husband he used to love Arab and Pakistani food. That’s all he had a taste for. Slowly, he started losing his taste for that type of food and I believe that’s when he started slipping in the deen as well. As far as I know he no longer practices and he no longer eats that type of food anymore either except for at this Afghani restaurant around our way that makes a mean tandoori chicken and naan. Is this just a coincidence?
Shattered:
So you mean that the piety really DID seem to be in the meat in your case
[...] Some however did not require much pressure, but were themselves all too ready to assume an “alien identity” (Arab, Pakistani, or whatever) in order to facilitate an escape (at least in their own [...]
I’m curious. If converted Muslims feel compelled to eat Arab( halal) foods because of their religion, then how about the Muslims who eat Halal American foods? ‘ Ive seen plenty of Halal food stores/restaurants that sell these same ” haram” foods to their Muslim customers: Hamburgers , Pizza, hot dogs etc. I’ve even seen a Halal breakfast menu at a masjid that I once visited: Turkey sausage/bacon, grits( yum!) eggs and toast. Some of the people who cooked/ate it wasn’t from the US( maybe from the Southern U.S. as I have come come across many non-Southerners to find grits to be repulsive).