Oh, no-- Non-Halal!

     Malaysia is nothing if not multi-cultural, something that seems to be both a boon and a burden for the country as it struggles to keep all the different races, cultures, ethnicities and religions pulling together for the common good.  Being an ex-pat, I find myself moving in a primarily Western social circle, so it's sometimes easy to forget that we do, indeed, live in a moderate Muslim country.  But occasionally that fact rears its head and smacks me upside the head, as it were.
    The most frequent reminder is TV, where cursing, nudity and such are bleeped out as often as possible.  Some American TV shows come across as a whole string of blacked-out screens or censorship bleeps and I'm not even talking about HBO-type shows where anything goes.
    The most recent reminder that "we're not in Kansas any more" was in connection with halal and non-halal food.  I don't know as much about this as I should, but when I looked it up, the gist from about.com (a really useful website) was this:

  In Arabic, the word halal means permitted or lawful. Halal foods are foods that are allowed under Islamic dietary guidelines. According to these guidelines gathered from the Qu'ran, Muslim followers cannot consume the following: 
   pork or pork by products
   animals that were dead prior to slaughtering
   animals not slaughtered properly or not slaughtered in the name of Allah
   blood and blood by productsalcoholcarnivorous animals
   birds of prey
   land animals without external ears

    There's a supermarket favored by ex-pats  (as opposed to the local one down the street) quaintly called Cold Storage.  Inside each of the stores is a small section boldly labelled "Non-Halal."  In the store near us, it's actually a separate section where one can find all manner of "sinful" things, like ham, bacon, pork sausages and other mouth-watering meats.  It reminds me of the porn movie section of a rental video shop.  Maybe it's my imagination, but the employees working that counter seem unhappy and listless--trapped in a hell of forbidden meat.


   So yesterday I went in there and came out with two plastic packages of frozen bacon.  When I got to the check-out and put them on the counter, the clerk suddenly whipped out a plastic bag and went to pick them up.  I'd brought my own thermal bag, so I told her I didn't need a plastic bag.  She looked decidedly unhappy and said, "I don't like that one."  Then she sheathed her hand in the plastic bag so she could pick up that sinful meat without actually touching it.  I felt bad for having put her into that awkward position and vowed to go to the Indian check-out gal next time.  I surely won't stop buying pork!