We live in a Muslim country that holds on to its religious laws but at the same time wants to offer a variety of international products and foods to attract our culturally diverse population. Therefore, while it's not easy to find pork, most hotels serve it. So, if you decide to eat pork, that is up to you. Dear Ali: What is the best way to avoid misunderstandings between me and my Emirati co-workers when it comes to bringing a cultural project further?
TA, Al Ain. Dear TA: Misunderstandings can happen no matter whom you work with. Whenever misunderstandings happen, there are always two sides of the story and the way you react to it can easily make matters worse. Cultural projects, in particular, should be about cultural exchange between everyone involved. I recommend you to be honest and directly approach your Emirati co-workers, explain to them the concerns you have and I am sure they will take them seriously.
At the same time, give them a chance to explain their side of the story. Such a respectful dialogue would be a good start to avoid these things happening in the future. Now, if you still feel misunderstood, then maybe try to focus on your common goals for this particular project instead of letting such misunderstandings interfere. The anthropologist ponders the reasoning behind why some people reject the same animal whilst others love it , and looks into the apparently irrational eating habits of different communities.
Judaism, the oldest of the main monotheistic religions that emerged in the Middle East, is the first to denounce the pig as an impure animal in the Book of Genesis and Leviticus.
Some 1, years later it is the Prophet Muhammad who also points to the pig as a tainted animal. Yahweh and Allah have forbidden the pig for millions of Jews and hundreds of millions of Muslims. Harris points out and reviews several hypotheses that explain the ostracism and the prohibition of the pig; the most obvious and popular until the Renaissance, is the belief that the pig was a very dirty animal since it wallows in its own excrement.
However, the anthropologist considers this reason insufficient and uncertain to justify why Muslims do not eat pork, since other animals such as cows, if they remain in a closed enclosure, can do the same. The pig makes up for its inability to sweat by cooling off with the clean mud , but if it does not have this and the space where it lives does not allow it to cool off in any other way, then it becomes covered with its own feces.
The higher the temperature, the dirtier the pig becomes and the arid climate of the Middle East would contribute to the dirt of these animals. The prohibition of the pig for reasons of public health was also endorsed in the thirteenth century by Maimonides, the influential Jewish theologian and doctor.
For Harris, although this theory is plausible, it does not justify such an exhaustive prohibition, and he attributes the rational consolidation of this dietary taboo to the discovery in the midth century that trichinosis was caused by ingesting pork that had not been well cooked.
Nor is this a definitive explanation for the anthropologist, since he claims that other diseases at the time caused by other animals were much more serious than trichinosis and even lethal, and the animals that transmitted them were not banned.
Other hypotheses suggest that the taboo on pork comes from the consideration of the pig as a totemic animal by some tribes. Submit your questions online or fill out the form below. By Naghmana Ahmed-Sherazi. Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcass shall ye not touch, they are unclean to you. Ye shall not eat of their flesh, nor touch their dead carcass. Since Islam is a derivative of both monotheistic religions that were revealed to Moses and Jesus, there are a lot of similarities in the doctrine.
It is considered to be an unclean animal, a scavenger that feeds on dead things—therefore, in general it is considered to be unhealthy to eat pork. This is the main reason why even though a Muslim may not practice certain aspects of Islam, generally they will still adhere to the edict and refrain from eating pork.
Naghmana Ahmed-Sherazi moved to Spokane about four years ago with her son.
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