Growing trend for halal meat

[SouthernFashionista]

I’m seeing this and it concerns me. I have noticed that Five Guys is now advertising that all its meat is halal and the restaurant in my workplace serves only halal meat. Who is pushing for this and why do the rest of us have no say? For what it’s worth, I am a Black woman, a practising Catholic with many Muslim friends and acquaintances. I don’t believe they are out there demanding halal meat everywhere they go.

I am aware of how racist MN can be and how emboldened racists are now being. It doesn't excuse @GutsyZebra's poisonous, bigoted post which is as toxic and ignorant as any rightwing fanatic.

Looking at Project 2025 and the US, looking at Catholic countries where there are no abortion rights, looking at Hasidic Jewish men who refuse their wives a get so they can marry again, looking at Christian countries persecuting gay people - all as bad as one another. Not identical, but all bad. If you think other religions are less bad in terms of oppression than Islam, take the blinkers off - they're all awful.

You know language matters a lot. I see that you have labelled him/her post with highly charged words. As if they have been the worst. There have been several people on this chat that have been just as bad. Where was your highly charged words then? As I said : that’s a stereotype. We have to be perfect at all times. While others have the grace to be as nasty/racist/ignorant as they like right?

Given how hideously racist MN has become, I can understand (though not excuse) why Muslims on here are angry. It doesn't excuse the post or the language used, but then the anti Islam posts should also not be excused.

^^^

People get themselves upset, but a lot of those people can’t say they champion animal welfare in any major way. Myself included.

I’d agree they are awful. I think in the UK Christianity is pretty insipid (what with losing all the moral authority due to CSA ) so we don’t realise how much power it has in other places.

I doubt the venison you eat was stunned. It's usually a quick death but not always that quick if there isn't an immediate headshot. It's natural though, and agree they have a better life overall including the moments just before they are shot when they are wandering around a pasture not herded into a dark abbatoir.

The particular issue with Islam is that it does claim to be perfect..Muhammad was supposedly illiterate when he wrote the

I don’t want any Muslims to leave. Truly. I don’t dislike Muslim people, or see them as any less ‘human’ than anyone else. I judge everyone I meet on an individual basis.

But Islam, in the way it is commonly practised, just is not compatible with Western values, or more specifically British values. Individual Muslims can absolutely be compatible, but en masse, I don’t see it. I feel there is currently a ‘fear and appeasement’ attitude to Islam from councils and government, whereby they know how easily the incident such as the Batley teacher can happen and therefore we have to tiptoe around Islamic sensitivities in the name of ‘tolerance’.

If I were to post on Mumsnet now, and say I am part of a group where half of us think homosexuality should be imprisonable, a quarter of us think public execution is a great way to punish crime, and that nearly half think wives should always obey their husbands, I would be called all the names under the sun. Nobody would defend me. I don’t see why this is different?

I fully accept the West’s role in destabilising Islamic countries and the fact we have caused or enabled the deaths of millions of people. It’s an absolute tragedy and unforgivable and I can understand why people want revenge. I have educated myself to the best of my ability on Middle East/Iranian history and put myself in the shoes of Muslims whose lives have been destroyed by the West. This is an ongoing process as it is a special interest of mine and there is a LOT of history.

But equally that doesn’t mean the UK now needs to be a sacrificial lamb by enabling uncontrolled immigration from these destabilised countries until we become like them, by way of apology. I still believe we need to stay a democratic nation with LGBT rights, equal rights for women, religious freedoms, freedom from cruel or inhumane punishments, and rule of law. No Islamic country has fully managed these, not one. Even the countries with minimal Western interference. Why?

To answer your question no, it wouldn’t fix everything. But concern over the influence of Islam is completely and utterly justified and not racist.

Why don't you ask the Racist Zebra why they were not addressing people who were making racist comments?

I spent enough time challenging Racists on MN. I don't have to engage with them every time. Have you addressed every racist post on MN? Has the Racist Zebra? .

The highly charged words were because I was matching the hostile energy (but not the bigotry) that the poster came at me with when they made their bigoted, ignorant hate filled statements.

This.

Its also pretty poor form @Justiceeternalto come at me with the whataboutery. You are trying to defend the indefensible.

Im not a Muslim and I don't wear a headscarf etc but I find the obsession (some) have with how Muslim women dress weird and creepy. There obviously isn't anything wrong with going out in shorts. But someone trying to insist I show my legs or I'm oppressed feels icky. If it's a man insisting on it then it makes me want to cover my legs automatically. Insisting women wear less layers, is making them "display their nakedness" if you want to use that term. If you (general you) can understand why "smile love" constantly directed at women is an imposition surely you can see how "show your hair" is an even creepier imposition. You can't handwring over the fact a woman might be being forced to cover her head while equally insisting there should be laws to stop them covering their heads. That's just as oppressive. And there have been cases of Muslim women in headscarves having them ripped of their heads.

Everyone needs to get their fucking noses out of how other people dress.

Do you think women in Afghanistan willingly cover themselves to the extent they can only see out of 1 eye?

So explain to me why stunned halal slaughter is more barbaric than stunned non-halal slaughter? How is a prayer being played barbaric compared to no prayer.

Objecting to unstunned slaughter is a valid position on animal welfare grounds. Objecting to stunned religious slaughter on animal welfare grounds is nonsensical.

Given that the majority of halal slaughter is stunned slaughter what is your objection?

Bear in mind that some meat producers use halal slaughter to ensure more of the animal can be sold as offal, feet, brains, tripe are more regularly eaten by some communities than others.

It is entirely reasonable to say you don’t want to eat meat slaughtered religiously even if stunned but say that. Don’t say it’s about animal welfare if you are objecting to stunned religious slaughter as well.

No, the Taliban are awful. But we are talking about the West/the UK (at least the original poster in this reply chain and the replies were). Probably there are awful men in the UK who dictate what their wives wear. But I don't think every Muslim woman who dresses modestly is being forced to dress like that. Any more than every self styled Christian trad wife type. I don't think she needs liberating from it, anymore than I need liberating from the fairly simple clothes I wear. If someone was trying to make me wear short shorts rather than maxi dresses I would feel like they were trying to undress me. That doesn't mean I judge women who wear shorts as being undressed.

There are apps now which take the clothes of women using AI. And apps which add clothes into women to make them more "trad" using AI. And some men gleefully use both. Whatever you wear someone will want to try to change it. It's a grotesque sense of ownership over women's bodies. There's a limit to what I can do about Afghan laws, but I can push back on creepiness here.

Obviously not. But that doesn't justify ripping headscarves off women in the West, does it? Nor does it justify banning Muslim women from wearing Islamic dress if they so choose.

Fgs when did I suggest ripping headscarves off as an antithesis to this?!

But it happens. And it happens because of people whipping up hatred of Islam. If you can't see that, there's a problem.

I mentioned it in the post you replied to so I guess the other poster thought you were responding to that point when you posted about the Taliban. If its got nothing to do with your post then that's on you for introducing the non-sequiter.

By ‘whipping up hate’ do you mean criticising Islam? To what extent do you think we should have freedom to criticise religion?

(Very sorry. Was my message too long? When posted it cut off most of it!)

The particular issue with Islam is that it is supposed to be perfect. The Quran states that Islam is the last religion and there will be no more prophets after Muhammad.

Importantly, Muhammad was supposedly wholly illiterate when he wrote the Quran, so it is literally God's words written by God's own hand.

Usefully we can point out that verses in the Bible and Torah were written by all-too-human men. So the chosen wording will be limited both by those men's understanding and the prejudices or errors of the time. Islam does not have this valuable wiggle room.

This has held back the Islamic world, as it cannot reinterpret its primary religious text to reflect a changing, cleverer and hopefully much kinder and less sexist and homophobic world.

In contrast, we have managed to 'soften' and 'update' mainstream Christianity and Judaism reasonably successfully across much of the world. The Church of England is basically tea, sympathy and free childcare at this point!

I very much hope that liberal Muslims are able to achieve this with Islam. I recognise it is both a hard and dangerous task for them. And I wish those trying to do so, every success!

There's a huge difference between measured criticism of a faith and describing it in the terms that are routinely used to describe Islam.

Criticising a faith = fine.

Stereotyping all of its adherents in the vilest of terms in the way SYL does = not fine.

Not being able to see the distinction = disastrous.

Just to clarify:

• Racism is discrimination based on race or ethnicity, rooted in the belief that one group is inherently superior or inferior.
• Cultural/ideological critique (even harsh critique) targets systems—colonialism, Western feminism, Eurocentrism—not races per se.
• The quoted passage is mostly the latter. It’s not saying “white people are subhuman” or “Muslims are superior,” but it is essentialising and attacking “the West” as a monolith.

So while it may be hostile and stereotypical, it’s closer to anti-Western sentiment or anti-colonial anger than to outright racism. Still, it risks slipping into prejudice because it makes blanket assumptions about entire groups of people.

✅ 4.
Key takeaway

• It’s understandable that people express anger at perceived hypocrisy, colonial history, and Islamophobia.
• However, generalising entire populations or using personal insults undermines the legitimacy of the critique.
• We can call this message harsh, generalising, and prejudiced in tone, but it’s not “racist” in the classic sense—it’s more anti-Western and anti-Eurocentric rhetoric.

It has been very frustrating for the past few days the constant stream of negative posts about Islam and Muslims. I believe it is scare mongering. Some of you say the government is pandering to us but It happens very rarely and the media sensationalise it. There have been hate crimes against Muslims recently have you heard about those? No, because that doesn’t suit the narrative. To me it looks like Anti Muslim propaganda is being ignored. I see nothing being done to support us. Neither from the government, media or our employers or Mumsnet. They just dont care and it’s easier to just dehumanise us. We are easy targets.

The orthodox Jews stay true to their beliefs (given they are orthodox). Followers of islam (for the most part) stays true to their beliefs and don't water down their religion. Something I respect.

Idk why we've gone all the way from talking about halal meat to bashing a religion. A religion which directly says there's no compulsion to follow it at all.