Parliamentary foot fetish 3: Feet firmly grounded?

by Bertha Henson

MUSLIM feet firmly grounded?

Are there many restaurants in Singapore with halal kitchens? It’s probably a must for those which serve Muslim food. But what about, say, restaurants in hotels, which serve breakfast or tea or buffets of all kinds? Would a Muslim eat in such a place so long as pork is not served – nor cooked in the kitchen?

So the Workers’ Party (WP) is making a point about having halal-certified kitchens on naval vessels so that Muslims can serve in the navy. It’s picking up from what Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen had said at a university forum in February last year about the lack of space on navy ships for such a separate kitchen.

Reading about the exchange between MP Faisal Manap, Senior Minister of State for Defence Maliki Osman, and Mr Ng, you would think that there aren’t any Muslims on naval vessels at all.

But there are. They used to be only “sea soldiers’’ who patrolled naval bases. But over the past year, “provisions’’ have since been made to those willing to serve. We don’t know how many.

Presumably, the “provisions’’ do not include a halal-certified kitchen but some kind of catering to Muslim needs such as providing seafood, chicken, and vegetables. That is, no pork or lard.

But it seems that this is not good enough for Mr Faisal, even though it is good enough for the US and French navies. He wants halal-certified kitchens so as not to deprive Singapore Muslims of the opportunity to serve as sailors.

But there are Muslims in the navy – or is Mr Faisal alleging that they are not Muslim enough?

This is a dangerous line to take, to start differentiating between Muslims and non-Muslims in a secular service, and even among Muslims. The frontbench did not refer to this point, but noted that operational needs must come first even as religious needs are being accommodated.

So no halal kitchen doesn’t mean Muslims can’t serve on board ships – or does it? Or maybe there should be just halal-certified kitchens since non-Muslims shouldn’t have a problem with it? That would solve the space problem but would probably open up a whole new can of worms.

To be continued…What are feet?

 

Featured image Kitchen HDR by Flickr user John Martinez Pavliga. CC BY 2.0. 

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The post Parliamentary foot fetish 3: Feet firmly grounded? appeared first on The Middle Ground.

- Bertha Henson