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November 22, 2011 at 11:58 am 
Ed Brayton The Worldnutdaily’s crack investigative team has discovered that the turkey you’re eating this week may well be a terrorist, or at least a terrsymp, and it probably has Muslim cooties. Here’s the hilarious headline:
Has your Thanksgiving turkey been sacrificed to idols?
Surprise! America’s favorite meal may be secretly dedicated to Allah
In other words, some turkeys in America are slaughtered according to the halal standards of Islam. Cue the faux outrage:
Customer service representatives from Butterball, one of America’s most popular Turkey brands, confirmed to WND that the company’s whole turkeys are – without being labeled as such – slaughtered according to Islamic “halal” standards.
“Halal slaughter involves cutting the trachea, the esophagus and the jugular vein and letting the blood drain out while saying, ‘Bismillah allahu akbar’ – ‘in the name of Allah the greatest,’” explains Pamela Geller, author of “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.” “Many people refuse to eat it on religious grounds. Many Christians, Hindus or Sikhs and Jews find it offensive to eat meat slaughtered according to Islamic ritual.”
Yes, the many Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Jews who are crazy enough to believe that uttering a few words — even if that actually happens, which I doubt — over a piece of meat somehow transforms it in some relevant way.
Pastor Mark Biltz of El Shaddai Ministries in Bonney Lake, Wash., has been sounding the the alarm for Christians to be aware of what he calls the “backdoor Shariah” now nibbling its way across the fruited plain.
Muslims join many Jews and some Christians in avoiding the consumption of certain animals such as pigs and birds of prey, but those of the Islamic faith also have their meat blessed in the name of their god, Allah.
“From the Christian standpoint, Allah would be an idol,” Biltz told WND.
In a sermon that he posted online, Biltz explained, “You could be eating beef, chicken, etc., offered up to Allah and not even know it. I can just imagine at a Passover Seder the caterer unbeknownst to anyone is serving halal meat! It could be on your pizza without you knowing it, or at your favorite restaurant. People don’t realize they could be eating meat sacrificed to idols!”
ZOMG! Obviously if you eat that turkey you won’t be falling asleep on the couch while watching football the way most Americans do, you’ll be strapping explosives to your chest and driving a car into a shopping mall or beheading an infidel!
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Muslims join many Jews and some Christians in avoiding the consumption of certain animals such as pigs and birds of prey,….. which leads to the question – who the hell is eating an eagle?
This doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would any national food producer go through the trouble of adhering to some particular religious standard, and then not label it as such? If you want Kosher food, you buy something labelled Kosher. If it is not labelled Kosher and you are strict about such things, you do not buy it. It would make no sense for any corporation to go through the extensive process of following those rules, and then not label it as such so that the people who care would be more likely to buy it. Perhaps the idea is that they will just slaughter everything according to Islamic law and then only label a small, targeted percentage for sale to those communities, but I highly doubt that the tiny number of people who seek out strictly Hallal meat make it economically worthwhile to apply those particular practices across the board.
I am much more familiar with Kashrut than I am with the rules of Hallal, and at least in that case, it would be ridiculously impractical for a megacorp like Butterball to make all of its turkeys Kosher. Which is why you find Empire turkey, or many other brands labelled KOSHER in big letters (my local Trader Joes even carrier its own TJ’s brand of Kosher turkey.) I wonder what the numbers of people who follow Kashrut as opposed to the rules of Hallal (don’t know the proper grammatic form… Hallality? Hallut? Hallaluya?) are like in this country. Considering the small number of Muslims, I can’t imagine this is actually a major issue.
I don’t want to cast aspersions on anyone’s journalistic ethics, but I am beginning to suspect that WND and Pam Gellar did not do adequate research before publishing this piece. Clearly not up to their usual high standards
http://biblia.com/books/esv/1Co8.4-13
The Bible promotes a don’t ask, don’t tell policy on this issue. WND is ruining it for everyone by asking.
I saw “Backdoor Sharia.”
Worst. Porn. Flick. Ever.
The fundie xian god doesn’t seem very powerful. In fact, he might even be comatose by now.
If the fundie god can’t even fight off a dead turkey with some words muttered over it, why call it god?
Why are these clowns worshipping a deity so weak he can’t even fight off a dead turkey?
And to back up #2, the whole reason modern slaughter methods were developed is they’re cheaper. No corporation will follow a more expensive process without reaping the benefits of it.
Record debt and unemployment, two hot wars, further destabilization in the Middle East, and now my lunch may have magically been rendered ritually unclean. Just one damn thing after another.
The funny thing is Muslims are a lot more concerned about idolatry than Christians, and I don’t only mean Catholic and Orthodox.
addiepray, perhaps the halal method was close enough to the regular method that it wasn’t a big expense to get more customers. I don’t know how turkeys are killed, but I know a guy who worked for 3 days in a goose slaughterhouse, and he said they hang them upside down on conveyors, electrically stun them, steam off the feathers, then I *think* the next step is cutting their neck and draining the blood. I think I saw the same thing on the F Word (a Gordon Ramsey show) when he had a guy come kill his turkeys. so if they are already cutting the neck and letting them drain out, really they just have to slap a halal sticker on it, assuming they even have a guy whispering words over that station, or maybe a tape playing.
addiepray
The standard commercial method of slaughtering turkeys involves suspending them upside down from a conveyor belt. They are stunned and then decapitated and left to bleed out. That pretty much fulfills the physical requirements of halal slaughter. As I understand it, as long as there is a tape loop of someone saying the ritual prayers in the vicinity, then that is sufficient for the turkey to be certified halal. The cost of segregating the halal from the non-halal turkeys is greater than just processing everything the same way.
A good example of the process on a small scale can be found on the video taken of Palin soon after the 2008 elections. She had just pardoned the Thanksgiving turkey and you can see the farmer in the background shoving the unpardoned turkeys headfirst into a funnel and decapitating them
Also, unless I’m mistaken, kosher buthering is less humane, since it doesn’t permit the birds to be stunned first
The magic words to Allah seem to be optional. It’s not in the Koran, but is some sort of tradition, assuming Al-Anaam isn’t something from the Koran.
I doubt that all of Butterball or anyone’s turkeys are Halal. It adds another step or two and they would stamp it Halal and sell it for more. Most likely WND just made that part up. They lied again.
BTW, from wikipedia, McDonalds sells halal chicken McNuggets in areas with large Moslem populations. Seems like muttering magic words over thousands of soon to be dead chickens would get boring pretty fast. I wonder if you can use a recording?
It must be terrifying to live as a fundamentalist, seeing invisible cooties and zoomies everywhere.
Obligatory reminder that there are sane reasons to oppose halal meat, i.e. that the slaughter methods in some cases are less humane. Dunno if that is the case for turkey.
Not that this makes the wingnuts any less wingnutty.
@ #9– I believe that you are right that Kosher slaughter does not permit the stunning first. From what I recall from my years in Hebrew school (loooooong ago), the animal needs to be killed with a single stroke from a super sharp and flawless (ie no nicks) knife. I think the idea was to be MORE humane, to kill the animal instantaneously, though obviously standards and practices have changed since the rules first went into effect. There are additional prohibitions, too, as far as how the blood needs to be drained (eating blood is a big no-no), etc. and as far as I know, there is no such component in Halal law. I also don’t think a prayer over the slaughter is a necessary component for Kashrut, though there is a prayer for everything, so I could very well be wrong. At any rate, only very religious men would qualify to be shochets (ritual butchers) so they probably do have to say some sort of prayer as they do their job.
Incidentally, there has been a movement in more liberal Jewish circles to incorporate social justice into the Kashrut standards. There are different certifications for being Kosher (the Orthodox Union- the U inside a circle- being the most common) and some folks are pushing for adding criteria of worker conditions, humane treatment of animals, etc. The movement gained some traction because of some horrendous abuse of immigrant workers at a Kosher slaughterhouse a few years ago. I know there were many arrests and prosecutions, but I don’t know the outcomes.
I wonder when someone will explain to them that “Allah” is not an idol, Allah is a deity that corresponds directly to the same stupid one they worship.
Pastor Blitz writes:
Well only if you are an especially idiotic Christian. And a hypocritical one at that since this position logically requires one to claim the same for the god Jews worship*.
I also don’t recall Christians getting their panties in a bunch about Kosher food being marketed in the same stores or even consuming Kosher food themselves.
And yes, I’m aware of the fact logic left town well prior to this really dumb argument.
*With no coherent narrative, let alone evidence, on how devout Jews were magically transformed into idolaters once they became aware that some people claim Jesus is God. Or how post-Jesus Jews are idolaters in spite of worshipping the very same god their ancestors did in precisely the same manner.
@Fifth Dentist (I was already there)
Ooohh, Backdoor Sharia
Honey, let’s go get some Turkey tonight…
Debatable, not that it matters. I prefer “Bob the Rain God” myself, a far superior deity.
There is no way to decide that issue so it is all opinion. Except fighting wars which has its own problems.
Long ago, I decided there is no such thing as the xian god. There is Yahweh, the Sky Monster of the OT. There is the NT god who is more benign and sometimes three gods in one, the Trinity. There is the modern god of love, who a recent invention but not a bad sort. Then Deos. Probably there are more. This Allah guy looks different enough so I would add him to the pantheon consisting of made up invisible sky fairies.
Even the earliest xians noticed this and some, the Gnostics and Marcionites said there were at least two gods. The creator god of the OT who is a monster, and the real god who looks a lot like Deos or Brahma.
I always find it amusing and/or sad when one idolator whines about all the other idolators.
@ Michael Heath #15
“Or how post-Jesus Jews are idolaters in spite of worshipping the very same god their ancestors did in precisely the same manner.”
My wife (a rabbi) would be annoyed if I didn’t point out that Jews do not worship in precisely the same manner as 2000 years ago. Modern Judaism is a Rabbinic tradition, based on centuries of evolving legalistic debate and discussion, as opposed to the equivalent of Biblical fundamentalism, Karaite Judaism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaite_Judaism)
Carl Sagan said it well.
They live in demon haunted darkness. For Cthulhu’s sake, they are afraid of a frozen dead turkey wrapped in plastic.
Even if you argue Allah is not Yahweh, unless he’s represented by some physical object (even more taboo in Islam than in Christianity), he’s still not an idol.
‘Bismillah allahu akbar’ – ‘in the name of Allah the greatest,’
I’ve seen this translation many times, and it doesn’t make sense to me. The basic adjective is “kebir,” big (or great). “Akbar” means bigger, and “al akbar” means the biggest. I assume I’m missing some subtlety of Arabic adjective inflection, but it’s bothered me since I learned Arabic 30 years ago (it’s all gone now except a few words, including this one). Can anybody elucidate the issue for me?
Can’t non-Muslims simply utter their own magic words to counteract the Muslim spell put on their dead turkey? Or does that mean the turkey gets a saving throw?
@9: Beheading is not halal because the spine is severed. Conveyor belts are not halal because the animal cannot be killed in the presence of another live animal, and because the slaughter is supposed to be done by hand, by a Muslim. The ritual words should be said for each individual animal, but there”s some wiggle room there.
But beyond that, halal requires that the animals be raised in conditions that no factory farm is likely to meet: turkey farms by companies like butterball would be considered inhumane. So the animal doesn’t even make it to slaughter before it becomes haram, or ‘forbidden’.
Maybe. Who knows?
I think you are supposed to wave a cross over it while muttering the magic spell. Or sprinkle it with holy water.
If the fundies can exorcize demons from people, they should be able to toss Allah out of a dead turkey.
There must a be forum somewhere on the net for these crucial questions. Try “Ask a Superstitious fundie xian moron.com”.
raven @5: I have to agree. Christians say grace before they eat. Which is, essentially, doing the exact same thing; dedicating the meal to God. So for someone to say that the grace doesn’t trump the halal process, its kind of an admission that the other guy’s blessing is stronger than yours.
As a socialist Canuck (the rethugicans think the two always go together) I would like to assure the US that birds of prey like the mighty bald eagle are protected in Canada. So no operation snowdrift is needed. Can someone let Fakes News, Wing Nut Dodos and the beckster know? The last time I tried, my computer refused to link to them, something about the anti moron software I installed.
Annnnd I will be spending the day researching how to convert to a healthy vegetarian diet.
What if I just douse it with Bacon Salt?
Concerning Allah being an “idol”, my understanding is that an idol, by definition, is a physical object or image that is worshiped as the representation or embodiment of a deity. This is seriously frowned upon in the Abrahamic religions, especially Islam, and throughout history there have been serious backlashes against the use of idols or icons (e.g. the “iconoclasts” of the late Roman Empire). Since Allah clearly isn’t an object or image, and since Muslims would shit their pants if anyone tried to make an image of Allah, let alone worship it, then Allah is clearly not an idol. At most he’s a false god.
Concerning the false god bit, Muslims themselves from the very beginning considered Allah as synonymous with the Jewish and Christian god, which is why they accept the validity of Jewish and Christian holy texts (though they regard them as flawed, unlike the Koran). And they considered Islam a refinement of Christianity in the same sense that Christianity was a refinement of Judaism. I’m sure that all Christians regard Muslims to have the wrong ideas about God and prophesy, but believing they worship an entirely different god is nuts. If there’s just one god, there’s just one god. Of course, these are fundies we’re talking about, so logic and consistency need not apply.
Typical idiots too ignorant of their own “holy” book to know what it really says.
Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” If some unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience. – 1 Corinthians 10:25-27
So what’s the problem? All you have to do is turn the turkey into the eucharist. If you do it to a halal turkey while it’s still frozen, you can just sit back and let the dueling theologies cook it.
to be fair to Pam Gellar (hold on, must throw up… ok, that’s better) she is Jewish (AFAIK), and there are strict prohibitions in Judaism regarding eating food dedicated to idols. This comes into play especially with wine- it’s the big difference between Kosher wine and non-Kosher wine (ie. has to do with who made it, who monitored it, etc. to insure it was not used in pagan ceremonies). I haven’t the slightest idea how religious Gellar is (nor do I care) but saying that the New Testament said it’s ok doesn’t apply to her.
Of course, then she could just get herself a Kosher turkey and be done with it. But clearly this isn’t about her religious concerns.
I wonder if WND had been around 30 years ago if they’d have been promoting conspiracy theories about kosher products.
@15:
Well, I do, though not so much lately. I remember the “KOSHER FOOD TAX!!!” rant from the early days of Usenet News, before anti-spam measures were developed, urging everyone to boycott anything marked with a “K” or a “U” in a circle. In the last decade or so the wingnuts have tried to shush their more anti-semetic factions because Israel has such an important role to play in the End Times, but they’re still around.
While some Muslims used to use the Kosher labeling as a guide (before more Hallal stuff became available), other Muslims would consider anything labeled Kosher to be automatically NOT Hallal. I am very curious as to the reverse, whether being Hallal prevents something from being Kosher, given that Hallal-ing it can involve saying an Islamic prayer.
I hereby pray over all previously un-prayed-over meat in this country, in the name of Princess Celestia.
“Hail, Celestia Invictus! In solar glory make our fields lush and our animals healthy! We thank you for bestowing your golden sunlight on our crops and kine. We remember you with this meal. Also we have paid our taxes, please stop sending the militia out here. Amen.”
Whatchu gonna do now, Biltz? That’s some tasty barbeque meat of yours I just prayed on.
@anandine #22
My Arabic is quite rusty but if I remember right then you don’t have a specific form for ____est. so bigger will be Akbar min… (bigger then…) while Akbar on its own, without a qualifier, will mean biggest.
A lot of the gods seem to be weak and lead boring lives these days.
The fundie god wanders around planting fossils everywhere so people will think the earth is old and go to hell.
The Moslem god Allah gets stuck in frozen dead turkeys in the USA of all places.
PS: Couldn’t you deHalalize a turkey by stuffying it with bacon and sticking some shrimp in it for good measure? Not being a sophisticated theologian, these things always confuse me.
I’m cool, my turkey was slaughtered by an Amish dude.
Having worked as a Quality Control inspector for over 3 years in what at the time was the world’s largest poultry production plant I could go into great detail on what is entailed in disassembling a chicken.
All I’ll say is that the actual throat cutting was done by machine with a couple of guys as backup to catch the one in ten or so that managed to miss the spinning blades.
Oh, it’s Mark Biltz the astrologist minister again. You’ve mentioned him before.
Is Halal any different than Kosher? If not, WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?!
It’s one of the suras–I looked it up.
@39 chilidog99:
Are you certain it wasn’t a muslim? All of those bearded religious types look alike.
OK.
It’s on to plan B.
To
exorcizede-Halalize your turkey, mutter magic spells (praying) over it while whacking it with a cross. Wave the magic book (bible) over it as well. Sprinkle it with holy water, stuff it with bacon and shrimp, and cook.That should drive old Allah right out of that turkey. I might have gotten some of the details wrong. It’s been a while since I paid much attention to xian rituals.
This is terrible!
You folks have done nothing but put devilish ideas in the heads of anti-religious youths. Now
wethey will be cruising around shouting food blessings, from deities other than the homeowner’s, all through the night.I have not heard of how close you have to be to bless someone’s food so
I guessthey assume blessings from street distance should be efficacious.Then
wethey can sit back and wait for the religious to die immediately?, thin to death?, be slowly poisoned?, just what happens when a devotee eats food blessed in the name of an opposing god?Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me!
C’mon… nobody else heard the voice of Freddy Mercury there?
@woof — Dammit, now it’s stuck in my head!
WND hates Thanksgiving.
Whenever I see religions calling each other out over whose god is the bestest, I secretly wish that there really was a god, so that he could tell them that they’re both wrong.
The only way to worship me is by balancing on your head screaming “I’m a monkey!” while eating a custard pie.
I wonder how many people would join our ranks?
-A-
“Is Your Family Eating [a] Terrorist Turkey?”
Then stop trying to eat the ‘Undepants Bomber’, you idiots!
:) Dingo
—-
‘See Martha! I told you that stufing tasted like C4′.
I also don’t think a prayer over the slaughter is a necessary component for Kashrut, though there is a prayer for everything, so I could very well be wrong. At any rate, only very religious men would qualify to be shochets (ritual butchers) so they probably do have to say some sort of prayer as they do their job.
The Misnah regarding the ritual slaughter (shechita) states that everyone can perform the ritual, and most of the commentaries agree that “everyone” includes women. Women don’t perform it often, I doubt very many are ever trained for it, but there isn’t anything in Jewish law to prohibit them from it. Technically. However, given the attitudes about Niddah, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were prohibitions involving a woman who is erva.
Also, I’m pretty sure there is a prayer, a short one, that a shochet says before killing the animal, but I don’t recall if it’s specifically worded. You know how it is, though: There isn’t a lot of room for getting lax or creative with Jewish rituals.
Crossposted at Zingularity:
When I was assisting in the slaughter of 16,000 Butterballs and their kin a day at the Ralston-Purina plant in Springdale, Arkansas, they killed halal, kosher, and goy turkeys all the same exact way. They hung them on a moving conveyor by their feet, turned off the electric stunner that actually only got them to flapping more, and slit their throats with sharp kitchen knives. After they bled out for a minute or so, the conveyor dipped them into a big tank of hot water to loosen feathers.
The collective IQ of the three or four guys on the kill line was maybe 110. You never, ever wanted to walk up behind one of them on the job and tap them on the shoulder. Damage could result. To your throat.
Kosher and non-Kosher turkeys, in those days of long ago, were differentiated by whether a “K” or “U” was on the plastic bag their cleaned carcass was stuffed into.
I don’t want to cast aspersions on anyone’s journalistic ethics…
We’re not talking about journalists, we’re talking about WND. But your concern is noted.
Halal and Kosher rules do differ somewhat. Among other things, shrimp is allowed under Halal rules.