A MUSLIM’S BEEF OVER PORK

In recent months some strange stories have emerged from La Línea what with the antics of the mayor Alejandro Sánchez - who wanted to impose a toll to enter or leave Gibraltar - but the latest to hit the headlines is a true story of our times.


Now pork is high on the political agenda in the USA where the term applies to add-ons to various bills from the Senate and Congress. These give financial benefit to organisations, businesses or the authorities in the Districts or States which the Congressperson or Senator represents. Whilst many Americans object to this practice I have yet to hear of a Muslim, American or otherwise, taking offence to the term pork.

So let us go to the Menéndez Tolosa school in La Línea where a teacher was trying to demonstrate various forms of weather and climate to his class. As an example he referred to the cold climate to be found in Trevélez in Granada province. Now Trevélez is famed for its cured hams which are dried and cured in the cold mountain air.

It was at this point that a Muslim pupil in the class stood up and asked the teacher not to talk about hams as it was offensive to his religion. Your first reaction may have been the same as mine, a wry smile, then dismissing the interruption as ridiculous.

Ridiculous it may be but at the end of school day the pupil went home and told his parents what had happened. They have now reported the teacher making an official legal complaint against him for amongst other things racism and xenophobia.

The CC.OO union’s educational representative in the Campo de Gibraltar, Sebastián Alcón, is upset that a teacher with a 20-year career behind him should be dragged over the coals in such a manner. Not surprisingly the teacher is said to be fed up with the situation.

However the family is intent on receiving its pound of flesh – although presumably not pork. They say the official complaint is being processed and they are awaiting an apology. They have also asked for a change of school for their son to avoid “more problems” and have also accused the teacher of calling their son “useless” and telling him to “go back to your own country.”

The case will rest with the prosecutor who handles cases involving minors. It remains to be seen whether the prosecutor takes further action or decides to leave the matter to hang out to dry like a ham in the mountain air of Trevélez.

(I should add that in recent days the Muslim association in the Campo de Gibraltar has stated that there is no problem with pork being mentioned before Muslims or by Muslims - they are simply, like Jews, not allowed to eat it!)

CONFUSED BY RELIGION

I am currently reading Indian Summer by Alex Von Tunzelmann in which she details the role of the Mountbattens in the partitioning of India to form Pakistan and the hand over of power in 1947. What struck me is the details given on how that partition was carried out strictly on religious grounds without any reference to the realities of local life with the then Moslem Eastern Pakistan (now Bangladesh) being deliberately made unviable in the belief that it would be forced to reunite with Hindu India.

Now I have often mentioned in this blog that I was brought up in Britain in the 50s and 60s as a Catholic in what was then a fundamentally Protestant country. I certainly remember taking part in Corpus Christi processions through the streets of my home town. Now whilst these are common yearly events in Spain, and wider Catholic Europe, it must have made a curious sight for my fellow Londoners. However in all those years I can truly say that I was never made aware of any anti-Catholic feeling. Indeed I remember when a divorcee moved in to our street accompanied by much nudge-nudging and sly winks. The woman was in all probability the innocent, hurt party but she was - the divorcee. Yet although we were the only Catholic family in the street and all marched off to mass on Sunday mornings, high days and holidays, never a word was said.

It was only when I moved to Dublin in the early 1970s that for the first time in my life religion became an issue. I would be asked straight out in the office was I Catholic or Protestant – a topic that had never been raised in my four previous jobs or whilst I was in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. I soon learned that whilst Dublin is the capital of the Catholic Republic of Ireland, such companies as Guinness, Boland’s or Gouldings were Protestant concerns, where leading with the right rather than the left foot would help in your climb up the promotional ladder. Most of the people I worked with were Catholics but there were some Protestants who were clients who believed that because I was English I must be one of them.

By then of course I wasn’t one of anything because although born a Catholic (and hence according to the Church always a Catholic) I was non-practicing and was as I am today an agnostic. It was all rather bemusing and amusing for more often than not in London it had been presumed, especially in the media world, that I was Jewish – but that’s another story.