Amsterdam: Halal Christmas dinner

Residents of the Diamantbuurt in Amsterdam are furious over the intent of organizers of a Christmas dinner to serve only halal food.

All residents recently received an invitation from Cinetol, a center for activities and youth, and the Red Cross, to come to dinner on Saturday, bringing closer together immigrant and ethnic residents. "In itself very nice, but when I read through the letter I was outraged. 'all participants are asked to bring something for the main course. Pay attention, halal would be eaten!' it said. I didn't know what to do with that, this is truly mad," according to a neighborhood resident.

Especially the elderly are upset that halal food is prescribed for a Christian party.

The organization is not aware of any anger. "We have organized this party to bring everybody closer together and therefore have decided to eat halal. But if it annoys the residents, we might bring along other foods. But they have to make that perfectly clear." Says Meriam Tjin a Lin of the organization. "It very much surprises me that people are upset. I had not received yet any complaint."

Source: Telegraaf (Dutch)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Halal Christmas ..
Anyone still thinking about animal rights? Killing animals by slicing their throat and let them bleed to death is cruel. Most European states have laws prohibiting exactly that. (Obligatory anasthesia etc.)
But what are our laws worth, if Muslims continue to get a free ride for doing whatever they feel their cult tells them ?
Not only with halal food, just look at those who put their females in sacks ( burqas..), so that only the eyes are visible. Another free ride
for Mohammed's adepts.
What's becoming an ever greater problem is that a lot of Muslims don't content themselves if they get their free ride but feel obliged to force the rest of society into their archaic world too.
It's time to acknowledge that there's no multicultural coexistence with islam - a religion who's believers only accept their view and are seemingly unable and unwilling to tolerate anything else than islam.
Just look at Mohammed's life and islamic history. Coexistence with other religions/cultures has never been an option for Muslims. Ever wondered why in any Muslim dominated society the nonmuslim minorities have ever since Muslisms took over constantly decreased? Turkey, f.e was till 14th the Christian byzantine. After WW1 there were still supposedly 20 percent Christians. Today there are less than 1 percent of Christians living there. And Turkey is considered a laicistic state..

Unknown said...

It has already been proven that severing the windpipe and major arteries with a sharp knife in the neck brings about instant unconsciousness. This was confirmed with an EEG attached to the subject animal in the tests, which detected no traces of brain activity.

On the other hand, animal brain activity as registered on the EEG showed major trauma when the animal was bludgeoned to death in the preferred fast-food slaughterhouse method.

Also, with this specified method, blood is allowed to drain completely from the animal carcass so that the meat is not contaminated with any possible viruses or bacteria, carried in the blood during the lifetime of the animal.

So, in fact, it was a good healthy Christmas dinner deal!

Esther said...

Hi Luke and anonymous,

The issue of having a halal Christmas dinner has nothing to do with the issue of whether halal is a more or less humane type of slaughter.

The question is why Dutch people coming to a Christmas dinner need to go out and buy specially prepared Halal meat to bring to the party.

The Red Cross was trying to be multicultural but it was taking only one culture into account - that of the immigrants. There are other ways to deal with such a case - after all ,if you go to a potluck dinner, you can eat of whichever dishes nobody forces you to eat from every available dish.

There is also the side issue that Christmas is a Christian holiday. Dutch society would need to grapple with whether and how it becomes a national holiday for all faiths.