"Halaal"/pork scandal in South Africa: Corruption in the Muslim Judiciary Council?, page 1

Around November 2011 a scandal erupted for Cape Town's, and probably SA's wider Muslim community. A video came to light that showed a major "Halaal" meat importing company called Orion Cold Storage removing labels from pork hearts, water buffalo and kangaroo meat, and re-labeling them as "Halaal" products.
Clearly, Muslims had been eating pork and other non-Halaal meats unwittingly for quite a while.

The owner claimed the video was staged by his disgruntled competition.
This was rejected by a court, which removed his right to sell Halaal products.

The issue arose again when E-TV broadcast a documentary this week that implied corruption in the Muslim Judicial Council (MJC), which is responsible for certifying Halaal products (3rd Degree: "Hard to swallow").

The program showed how the bosses at the MJC constantly dodged the investigative journalist Debora Patta.
Although they claim to have certified the offending products in ignorance and good faith, it certainly seemed like somebody took some bribes, and the media today spoke of some Muslim opinions that want the MJC disbanded, and their labels considered void. More disconcertingly, a "Fatwa" ( a possible death sentence) was even mentioned, although not "officially".

Although one can understand and sympathize that eating certain foods is disgusting for certain diets, customs and laws, many other faiths have long complained of a lack of choice in the variety of certain "non-Halaal" products, but these are usually dismissed as racist or "Christian extremist" non-issues.

Well, I sympathize with the Muslim community, and one wonders how this will be resolved.

Ganief Hendricks, leader of the Al Jama-ah, said: “What has aggravated many Muslims is that Orion employees have joked that they have fed Muslims with pork for many years. I am very concerned Muslims will take the law into their own hands.” He said there was talk in the community that a fatwa (decree) had been issued to punish senior MJC members and captains of the Muslim meat industry for “being complicit in selling pork to Muslims”. He had been in contact with six top meat wholesalers from whom 80 percent of Muslim butchers bought their stock, Hendricks said. “It is clear that Muslims across South Africa have been fed with pork and this is a blot against every halaal certifying authority and every butcher in the country,” he said.

www.sundaytribune.co.za...

Here is the documentary of 23 minutes, which gets more surprising at every turn, as the journalist pushes for answers, first from the Orion Cold Storage boss, and then from the MJC.

How Halaal or even Kosher is meat?
I think it begs a wider global question.
How serious would such an offense be (selling meat under false ritual pretenses)?
Can people always believe what they are told when there's money involved?

I just hope my vegan patties and sausages are really vegan!

Anyway, a great piece of journalism.
3rd Degree - Hard to Swallow.

reply to post by Dr UAE

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Good point.

I don't think it affects only Muslims in SA.

I've had food-poisoning from seafood franchises in SA quite frequently, and I've now become virtually vegan out of fear of getting sick again from prawns or Vietnamese catfish.
I think corruption and new ways of producing and importing foods are a huge concern.
So there's definitely a wider problem in SA with the whole food industry.

Just like our rhinos that are shot every day, I think the influence comes mainly from China and other Eastern countries, who execute our people on drug charges (shanghaiist.com...), but behave like the new colonialists in Africa when it comes to flouting labor laws, running gangs, poisoning people with bad food and decimating our endangered wildlife, and taking our religious freedom to see the Dalai Lama away.

They murdered one of our women in China, simply because she insisted that she was framed.

These are probably additional issues, and somewhat emotive, but we never had this in SA before.

reply to post by ManBehindTheMask

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No we are not doomed , if a person doesn't know then it's ok and therefore forgiven by God , a person is only accountable when he knows.

reply to post by ZeroKnowledge

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Yes, ultimately, if people are corrupt one can look for many influences.
But the direct buck stops with people from that community, and the authority they put in place.

If the MJC is corrupt in SA, then they ultimately cannot blame anybody else.

Surely somebody who works for the MJK should know the difference between a pork and sheep heart.
It is a conspiracy within their own religion, because nobody else runs their council.

SA and much of the world has been corrupted in many ways, but passing the buck to "Zionism" is not convincing in this case.

reply to post by groingrinder

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I wonder, are kangaroos immediately not Halaal, or is it how they are slaughtered?

Apparently there's a lot of that meat about that nobody particularly wants, but I wonder on its status.

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