[quote=“TainanCowboy”]semantics.[/quote]nonsense.
HOMER!! :homer:
HOMER!! :homer:[/quote][i]…D’OH![/i]
Well while I understand completely that we are taught from childhood that pork is a disgusting animal and they are taught that it will keep you from entering heaven (which it did not say in the old testiment) I think you just shouldn’t work a job you can’t do based on your religion.
That also goes for pharmacists for refuse to distribute certain drugs. Doesn’t go for cabbies as much because they can just go to the back of the queue and this isn’t keeping someone from having the service rendered.
[quote=“ironlady”][quote=“TainanCowboy”]DB -
Your parents were Pro-Life…and you?[/quote]
Being pro-choice (i.e., believing that religion has little place in legislation or the judiciary) is not the same as being anti-life.[/quote]
Life would be so much more simple if others saw this clearly.
What if you burried the missiles in liverwurst?
People can eat what they please, but why is the pig so put down? Unclean, maybe when uncooked, but pretty much every animal will give you some kind of disease or parasite if not cooked properly. Sure, pigs roll around in the mud, but do chickens spend afternoons at the spa or something? Last time I checked the chickens were scratching around out back in a yard full of their own poop. And what about goats? Those are some dirty little guys who would chew the paint off an outhouse, so where’s the prohibition against eating them?
In Islam, it’s technically forbidden to eat any animal which is omnivorous or carnivorous - only herbivores are okay. But then when you consider it, religions can prohibit a lot of weird things - Islam also bans men from wearing gold!
myury: Pigs have no sweat glands. They also eat things that are already dead. This (aside from the split hooved bit) makes them pretty dirty.
You are correct, the prohibition is against consuming pork, but most Muslims will not touch let alone kill a pig either. The Quran does not explain why pork is forbidden, but it is clearly stated that it’s not allowed to eat: Why do Muslims not Eat Pork?
The pig has rolls around in the mud to cool itself, else they actually do like clean environments. Here are some facts, not limited to Islam, about why the pig is often put down: Great Facts on Pork
In Islam, it’s technically forbidden to eat any animal which is omnivorous or carnivorous - only herbivores are okay. But then when you consider it, religions can prohibit a lot of weird things - Islam also bans men from wearing gold![/quote]
Yeah well, be that as it may, I did a military course with three officers in the Egyptian Army. They didn’t drink, smoke or or eat pork. And they did pray five times a day as required. However, for some reason eating bacon with eggs for breakfast was okay…
Maybe they didn’t know it was bacon. Or maybe it was turkey bacon!
There’s a story about some US soldiers getting live pigs past customs and into Saudi Arabia by claiming that they were American hairless sheep.
But the prohibition is against consuming pork because it’s unclean, not against scanning it in a checkout line, right? There’s no prohibition against, say, killing a pig, or touching one, is there? I’m probably just way too ignorant of the particular prohibition here, so feel free to laugh at me. :p[/quote]
It’s true that the prohibition is specifically against consuming pork (and blood, carrion, food sacrificed on alters to other gods, meat from a strangled animal, etc.), but purity is a central theme in Islam. Maintaining purity is important for Muslims, and since pigs are considered unclean, touching a pig would make you unclean and you would need to perform ritual ablution (wudu) before you could pray again. Same if you were to use the restroom or pass gas, but touching unclean animals is usually avoidable and so is looked on more harshly.
In some of the ahadith Muhammad is seen to order his followers to slaughter dogs, leading Muslims to believe that dogs are unclean (the Quran does not mention this, however). In Malmo, Sweden, one blind Swede said she was refused taxi service 21 times in one evening because the Muslim taxi drivers said she could not bring her dog into their taxi. Even if she was exaggerating, blind people being refused taxi rides is a common occurence now all over Europe and parts of North America. Again, the issue is purity.
No, I don’t think this is the issue at all.
The issue is bringing your private religious beliefs into a secular public forum.
But are these forums really “public” and “secular”? The cab case maybe, insofar as most western governments don’t allow refusal of business to the disabled, which generally entails allowing them to bring their dog in. In the grocery store case though it’s a private business dealing with a private employee, and customers who are private individuals. Let the store fire them if they please. As for being secular, since when are business and society necessarily secular?
"ironlady wrote:
TainanCowboy wrote:
DB -
Your parents were Pro-Life…and you?
Being pro-choice (i.e., believing that religion has little place in legislation or the judiciary) is not the same as being anti-life.
Life would be so much more simple if others saw this clearly."
…And a lot less democratic.
Besides, who ever said that a pro-life position necessarily involves religious belief? Certainly not this group:
godlessprolifers.org/home.html
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]DB -
Your parents were Pro-Life…and you?[/quote]
I don’t see the relevance to this thread. I’m not religious, and therefore don’t have any religious restrictions. To somewhat answer your question, however, I see both the anti-abortion and anti-choice camps as having overly simplistic views of what is a difficult and complex situation, so I don’t identify with either group. But let’s save that discussion for another thread and another day. 
Greg, I was referring to as clearly as IronLady who stated that a persons beliefs on issue A do not require a certain belief on issue B.
Quite right, SuchAfob. Apologies for misreading your post.
While I want to respect Muslims’ right to practice their faith, I also tend to agree with JDSmith on this: “The issue is bringing your private religious beliefs into a secular public forum.”
Surely one who insists on such ‘purity’ shouldn’t be choosing to work in a job which requires frequent handling of pork. :loco: Of course if customers didn’t mind scanning and bagging the one or two pork items (I guess I wouldn’t mind), this wouldn’t be a problem, but apparently it is. I wonder how much Islamophobia in the wake of 9-11 is behind the complaints.
If I were the employer I don’t think I’d take redandy’s hardline approach of firing them. I’d try to be sensitive to the employee’s concerns, but if customers are complaining too, I guess I’d try offering the employee a different spot in the store where no such handling occurs, e.g., stocking the fruit carts or weighing fruit or something. 
Surely some compromise could be reached to make everyone happy.
We all do it. Just don’t let it happen again.