Apropos sex-bomb-turned-hatemonger Brigitte Bardot, a reader writes:
Re Halal and kosher slaughtering practices
Mark, FWIW these two look more or less identical to an outside observer.
Defenders of kosher make much of the fact that kosher butchers use long knives and that the knives are required to be unusually sharp. Apparently, halal butchers use short, dull knives. One of the Nazis’ condemnations of Jews was based on their ritualistic cruelty to animals, also FWIW. The Nazis were opposed to cruelty to animals but in favor of cruelty to humans.
As I said in my post, it’s not about whether you think Muslim or Jewish (or Episcopalian or Unitarian) practices are cruel. It’s about whether you think Brigitte Bardot has the right to say so.
When I was 18, my first apartment was across the street from a Halal butcher. Tasted great. I loved it. In those innocent days, I wrote a comedy sketch about Hal & Al the Muslim butchers. Happy times. But, if you disagree on the matter of Halal meat, it shouldn’t be a crime to state your view.
Take another area of Judeo-Islamic harmony: circumcision. For a while, Andrew Sullivan was banging on against circumcision night and day: barbaric practice, mutilation, child abuse, etc. Our old pal John Podhoretz, late of this parish, would periodically hoot and jeer at him over his circumshishhiphobia.
But in France JPod (or more likely the Supreme Islamic Council of St Tropez) could complain to the state and a French prosecutor would haul Sullivan into court and demand he be fined and/or tossed in jail for his “racism”. It’s not a good idea to criminalize opinion. “Hate speech” laws strike at the heart of civilized society.