I was at a barbeque activity for all students in my laboratory. It was a monthly cohesion event to celebrate the birthday(s) for our lab-mate(s). Since one of our lab-mates, C, is a Malay, our mentor had assured her that all the food that we had ordered were Halal.

However, just when the barbeque started and everyone was eating happily, one of the Chinese birthday boys, B, suddenly said that he had brought pork too. Following that, the person beside him told him that C was also here and she cannot eat pork. His reply to this was, “Don’t worry, there is aluminium foil wrapping the pork, therefore it will be alright to barbeque it with the rest of the food”. C immediately stopped eating and the atmosphere became really awkward. The only food she ate after that was the birthday cake. Indifferent to the surroundings, B remained in high spirits throughout the rest of the dinner.

I feel slightly exasperated that people often make tactless assumptions that are untrue. In this case, B assumed that with the aluminium foil wrapping over the pork, it would not have cause any problems. Unknown to him, it is still deemed inappropriate by C to mix pork with the rest of the Halal food. This is a situation whereby cultural ignorance and insensitivity come into play. Just because a dish has no pork does not necessarily mean that it is Halal. Halal food also requires that food that should not be contaminated in the storage or preparation process with meat that has not been slaughtered in accordance with the Islamic Law. Given that we are living in a multi-racial country surrounded by Islamic neighbours, perhaps it will be beneficial if we make an effort to learn about these cultural norms.

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