UTSC Muslim Students Get Halal Food - Still Seething

Thu, Oct 11, 2007 at 11:14:10 am PDT

A campus restaurant at the University of Toronto at Scarborough has begun offering halal meals for Muslim students.

And the Saudi-funded radical Islamic front group calling itself the Muslim Students Association is seething and complaining, because the restaurant is also still accommodating the infidels: Halal food hard to swallow at UTSC.

The Muslim Students Association at UTSC has ignited a fierce debate on the particulars of halal food on campus, refusing to support a long-awaited halal option at a Bluff’s, a UTSC campus restaurant.

The result of numerous faculty, staff and student requests, the new menu was introduced to the campus on May 29, making all chicken and beef options certified halal. Despite this, many MSA members say that any establishment that also serves alcohol and plays dance music is an unsuitable environment for their dietary needs.

This disagreement between the MSA and the university is not the first. Halal food has long been a hot topic at UTSC. With its large population of Muslim students and the politically active MSA counting hundreds of members, the issue of proper accommodations for halal food has repeatedly come up as a major point in student elections and public task forces.

Some students said the restaurant, in failing to accommodate those who prefer not to eat at an alcoholic establishment, made more of a negative gesture than a positive one with the menu option.

“This initiative was brought forth solely by Bluff’s without ever consulting the MSA or Muslim students. If this was a deliberate accommodation, it’s kind of offensive in giving us the food in a manner unsuitable to us,” said Ahmad Jaballah, a former MSA executive and current Scarborough Campus Students Union VP students and equity.

Jaballah also argued that patronizing such an establishment is wrong because Muslim students would provide revenue for Bluff’s to purchase alcohol—an action forbidden by hadith, a Prophetic saying.

(Hat tip: rain falls on everyone.)