Gatestone Update :: Soeren Kern: Denmark Bans Meatballs to Accommodate Muslims, and more

   

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• Soeren Kern: Denmark Bans Meatballs to Accommodate Muslims
• Yaakov Lappin: As Egypt Nears Civil War, Israel on High Alert
• Nina Rosenwald: Gatestone Weekly Roundup

Denmark Bans Meatballs to Accommodate Muslims

by Soeren Kern
August 16, 2013 at 5:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3936/denmark-bans-meatballs

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"The next thing could be that Danish nurses are forced to go under cover as Muslim women in order to please Muslim patients." — Martin Henriksen, Spokesman, Danish People's Party [DF]

One of the largest hospitals in Denmark has admitted to serving only halal beef -- meat that is slaughtered in accordance with strict Islamic guidelines -- to all of its patients regardless of whether or not they are Muslim.
The revelation that Danes are being forced to eat Islamically slaughtered meat at public institutions has triggered a spirited nationwide debate about how far Denmark should go to accommodate the estimated 250,000 Muslim immigrants now living in the country.
The halal food row erupted in July when the Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet reported that Hvidovre Hospital near Copenhagen has been secretly serving only halal-slaughtered meat for the sake of its Muslim patients, for the past ten years. The hospital serves more than 40,000 patients annually, many (if not most) of whom presumably are non-Muslim.
Halal -- which in Arabic means lawful or legal -- is a term designating any object or action that is permissible according to Islamic Sharia law. In the context of food, halal meat is derived from animals slaughtered by hand according to methods stipulated in Islamic religious texts.
One such halal method, called dhabihah, consists of making a swift, deep incision with a sharp knife on the neck that cuts the jugular vein, leaving the animal to bleed to death. Much of the controversy involving halal stems from the fact that Sharia law bans the practice of stunning the animals before they are slaughtered. Pre-slaughter stunning renders the animals unconscious and is said to lessen their pain.
Amid a surge of public outrage over the decision to serve only halal beef, Hvidovre Hospital's vice president, Torben Mogensen, has been unapologetic. "We have many patients from different ethnic backgrounds, which we must take into account, and it is impossible to have both the one and the other kind of beef," he says.
"First," Mogensen adds, "I do not think that a slaughter method as such has anything to do with faith. Second is, of course, that all chickens in Denmark are halal slaughtered, and it has to my knowledge not caused anyone to stop eating chicken."
Mogensen also says the hospital is not trying to "push the Islamic faith down the throats of non-Muslim patients"
In a press release, Hvidovre Hospital states, "We introduced halal meat both for practical and economic reasons. It would be both more difficult and more expensive to have to make both a halal version and a non-halal version of the dishes. Then we have two production lines. It requires more people, more equipment and more money."
The hospital advises non-Muslims to take it or leave it: "We always have alternatives to halal meat such as pork, fish or vegetarian dishes. It is a question of attitude."
According to the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, there is no comprehensive inventory of the number of hospitals in Denmark have halal meat on the menu. But officials at the University Hospital in Aarhus, the second-largest urban area in Denmark after Copenhagen, say the decision by Hvidovre Hospital to serve only halal is an example of political correctness run amok.
In an interview with the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, Ole Hoffmann, the head chef of Aarhus University Hospital says: "We have never had a patient ask for halal meat, and therefore it is an issue that we have never discussed. I think it is a strange decision. If there was a desire to serve halal meat, then we would of course consider it, but we would never completely eliminate non-halal meat."

Pork today, gone tomorrow? Aarhus University Hospital, in Denmark, where non-Halal food continues to be served. (Photo credit: Carina T./WikiMedia Commons)

Hoffmann also disputes the idea that it is difficult to offer two different kinds of beef. "I do not know why it should be more difficult. After all, our job is to serve patients."
In a separate but related story, Ekstra Bladet reported that at least 30 nurseries, preschools and daycare centers in Denmark have banned the Danish national dish -- pan-fried meatballs known as frikadeller -- because they include pork and are offensive to Muslim children.
Ishøj Municipality -- a town on the island of Zealand in eastern Denmark where most of the population is of African, Arab, Pakistani or Turkish origin -- has introduced, to accommodate Muslim children, a blanket policy of not serving pork, including frikadeller, sausages or liver pâté, at any of its daycares or nurseries.
The newspaper also reports that in parts of Copenhagen, the dietary ban has gone beyond pork and some schools are now serving only halal meat because the schools' leadership say they do not want to offend Muslims.
In Nørrebro, for example, a district in Copenhagen where up to 40% of the children are Muslim, schools have banned not only pork but are serving only halal meat.
According to Danish Sociologist Jon Fuglsang of the Metropolitan University College, banning pork is the wrong way to go. "Pork is an important part of Danish food culture that brings much national pride," he says. "It must be possible to serve differentiated menus for children. We should not banish certain foods in order to show respect. It is not the right way to do it. Children must learn how to think about these issues," he adds.
Danish nutrition expert Professor Arne Astrup sums it up this way: "It's a question of food culture, the banning of traditional Danish food just because it includes pork. I would find it difficult to understand if my child suddenly could not get healthy Danish dishes like pâté and sausage made from pork, just because there are some Muslim children in the same institution."
According to the Danish People's Party (DF), which is pushing for limiting immigration and promoting cultural assimilation of admitted immigrants, the government should intervene in the halal dispute by passing a law that would prohibit public institutions from discriminating against Danish culture.
In an interview with Jyllands-Posten, DF party spokesman Martin Henriksen says, "It is disconcerting that our public institutions are educating Danish children to give exaggerated deference to Muslims. Those practices are illegal because they unceremoniously discriminate against those who value Danish food culture."
Henriksen adds, "The next thing one would imagine could be that Danish nurses are forced to go under cover as Muslim women, in order to please Muslim patients."
The center-right Conservative Party agrees. According to party spokesman Tom Behnke, "The limit is where we as Danes are forced to live in a completely different way than we have done until now. I will not accept this. It is fine to take into account that some people have religious beliefs. But ordering me and my children to follow it, I am opposed to that."
Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a Social Democrat who has relaxed restrictions on immigrants and asylum seekers, has sought to defuse the politically inconvenient halal imbroglio by trying to find a middle ground. She says that Danes should be accommodating to all faiths and cultures, while maintaining their own values and traditions and keeping meatballs in hospitals and kindergartens.
In an interview with the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (video here), Thorning-Schmidt said butchers and slaughterhouses should add labels to their packaging to indicate whether or not meat has been slaughtered under halal practices. "I think it is natural that consumers want to know if they are eating halal meat or not. I urge all companies to clearly indicate it on their packaging," she says.
Thorning-Schmidt also says that kindergartens and hospitals should continue to serve pork roasts and meatballs: "They are part of the Danish culinary tradition. We need to remember that in our zeal to welcome new citizens we do not to lose sight of our own culture. We have to stick with the way we eat and what we do in Denmark. There should be room for frikadeller."
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Related Topics:  Soeren Kern

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As Egypt Nears Civil War, Israel on High Alert

by Yaakov Lappin
August 16, 2013 at 4:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3938/egypt-civil-war-israel

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Near the Sinai peninsula, the Israeli Defense Forces continue on high alert, watching every suspicious movement in the sands near the Egyptian border for signs of the next attack.

The dramatic escalation in Egypt's domestic conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military is being accompanied by an upsurge in the activities of jihadi organizations in the Sinai Peninsula.
Since Morsi's ouster, extremist Salafi and jihadi organizations have launched waves of attacks on Egyptian security forces, and provoked this week's extensive counter-terrorism operation by the Egyptian army.
These Al-Qaeda-affiliated forces are also seeking to strike Israel -- both to satisfy their ideological demand for jihad against Israelis, and to try and force Israel and Egypt into a confrontation, thereby undermining the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.
The Israel Defense Forces are therefore on high alert in the event of further attacks by terrorists in Egypt, while also facing the dilemma of how to safeguard its own national security without infringing on Egyptian sovereignty at this most sensitive time.
Two unprecedented incidents on the southern border in just the last few days, however, served as markers for the rapidly changing situation.
First, according to international media reports, an Israeli drone struck an Al-Qaeda-affiliated organization in Sinai, as it was making final preparations to fire rockets at Israel.
While Israeli defense officials have not confirmed or denied the reports, if true, they represent the first preemptive counter-terrorism strike on Egyptian soil.
If Israeli intelligence receives word of an imminent attack taking shape in Sinai, with little time to coordinate a response with Egyptian military forces, such action might be expected.
Islamists across Egypt were quick to seize on the incident to accuse the Egyptian military of being complicit in an Israeli breach of Egyptian sovereignty.
Although this incident was quickly forgotten by Egyptians as both Egypt proper and Sinai descended into turmoil, there is evidence that further attacks by Sinai terrorists against both Egyptian security forces and Israel are being planned.
An additional signal of the deteriorating security situation in Sinai was the rocket fired by a terrorist organization at the Red Sea tourist resort city of Eilat over the weekend.
Anticipating the attack, the IDF stationed an Iron Dome anti-rocket battery in the city. The prior preparation paid off: the system fired an interceptor that successfully stopped the rocket from hitting the city.
The rocket failed to hurt anyone, but it did trigger an air-raid siren and frighten tourists, sending them scatting for cover. Unlike the cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon, which are used to Palestinian rocket terrorism, Eilat, a resort town, is not used to living under rocket fire.
Today, a shadow of uncertainty hangs over the future of the city's tourist industry. For now, Israeli visitors to the city are displaying trademark resilience, and are continuing to pack the city's hotels and beaches.
Nearby, however, the IDF continues on high alert, watching every suspicious movement in the desert sands near the Egyptian border for signs of the next attack.

Related Topics:  Egypt, Israel  |  Yaakov Lappin

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Gatestone Weekly Roundup

by Nina Rosenwald
August 16, 2013 at 3:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3937/gatestone-weekly-roundup

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The media often will not report what they do not want us to know. Here, from the past week, are just a few of Gatestone's offerings to help keep us aware:
Can New York University, Cambridge, other institutions of higher learning be bought for few million yuan? Bet you can't guess. Samuel Westrop reports on the largely unremarked-upon influx of Chinese cash into Western universities, with strings, chains, and shackles attached. For an upcoming conference at Cambridge, funded by China, academics were warned not to bring up the distasteful subject of those "irritating" human rights -– and members of China's intelligence service will, unbelievably, be briefed on British security practices.
It seems Hosni Mubarak was onto what the Muslim Brotherhood was up to. Raymond Ibrahim presents a pre-ouster interview with the former Egyptian president in which Mubarak prophetically warns that the Brotherhood exploits "democracy to eliminate democracy," and that, if it ever does govern, its dictatorship will not be pretty.
Khaled Abu Toameh asks the same question that seems to recur: Where are all the "pro-Palestinians," usually seen waving their moral outrage, now that Palestinians trying to flee death in Syria are being denied entry into Lebanon? Are Palestinians what the "pro-Palestinians" really care about? Really?

Related Topics:  Nina Rosenwald

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