FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Food

I Talked to a Young Muslim Facebook Group about Pork

Abstaining from pork is a compromise for Muslim kids. I'm Muslim, and I abstained from eating it until I was 25. I recently explored a young Muslim Facebook group to hear their thoughts on all things porcine.
Foto: Flickr-User Ernesto Andrade

Restrict a child, and he or she will become unquenchably curious about the very thing you forbid. Muslim parents have yet to figure this out and continue to fiercely discourage the consumption of pork, the drinking of alcohol, and any contact with the opposite gender (prior to that mandatory marriage to your cousin at age 14). Prohibition never works for booze or sex, whether on a national level or within a household. Kids will always gravitate toward altered states and carnal satisfaction, breaking the rules set forth by their parents. Comparatively, the charms of pork are easier to resist, but abstaining from it becomes a compromise for Muslim kids. If you have any allegiance at all to your parents or to Islam, it's how you keep one foot within bounds. I grew up in Thailand, one of the world's greatest hotbeds for culinary explorations in swine. From age zero to 13, I was exposed to some of the most incredible preparations of pork on the planet, and was allowed to eat none of them. Though I lived in Thailand, my parents are Muslim Pakistanis, and there was no room for dietary transgression.

Advertisement

I progressed through the teenage rites of passage at the same pace as any American kid, but like so many with Muslim backgrounds, my rebellion excluded pork. My foot remained in bounds until I was 25. When I finally started eating pork, it was an orchestrated effort. I chose to exploit my pig virginity for the sake of inspiration and a catchy premise for a blog. What followed was eating lot of it and writing a lot of words about it, and when it was over, I was completely desensitized to the revulsion that so many Muslims feel about the animal. With my lifelong conditioning undone, the classic Muslim arguments against pork suddenly sounded like the bullshit they are to me.

I recently gathered a few opinions on the matter via a Facebook group populated by young Muslims. I asked if any of them ate pork, and if so, why they did it. I received a slew of responses, some of them non-chalant about the practice while others were fiercely opposed. As you see in any comment scenario, the loudest voices were the most predictable. To justify their avoidance, several argued that pork is "filthy," backing it up claims like the following:

"The fact that all pork must be cured before being sold in stores is scary. It smells and looks disgusting."

"Pigs digest food very quickly. Toxins remain in pork. Pigs from industrial farms literally eat shit. Pork has way more bacteria than other meats and requires a lot of preparation in cooking and cleaning the meat."

Advertisement

"I think empirically I could research a paper in a day to prove how much likelier a pig is to have overall bad health, viruses/contamination."

These were often made in the same breath with denying any religious influence on their views:

"My ideas on pork are not rooted in religion or what my family says. I've read a lot about pork, meat, and food in general."

"Part of it is holding onto culture, I guess, and also it's the unhealthiest meat."

All this conjecture is fully ignorant of the reality that billions of people consume pork every day and there is no abundance of parasite epidemics breaking out from it. It is no "filthier" than any other meat and has the same recommended cooking temperature as beef and lamb. The insistence on pork's filthiness centers around one purported habit, the same one my parents and grandparents drilled into me to ensure that I would never warm up to it.

"Pigs eat their own shit"

To be fair, pigs don't discriminate. They'll eat anyone's shit. In fact, they'll eat anything you put in front of them. That doesn't mean that the pigs being raised on farms today are subsisting on shit and trash and dead bodies. In fact, heritage breeds like the famous Berkshire have controlled diets of fresh vegetables and grains, while most farm-raised pigs in the US are fed on corn and soybeans like most commercial livestock. There's probably some shit in there, but you can bet you've eaten beef from a cow that ate some shit too. They're not above it. And you've definitely eaten chicken that's eaten some chicken.

Advertisement

Another common argument is that pork is very close to human flesh. One of the more reasonable voices acknowledged this:

"It was definitely a lifelong programming to not eat it. I knew it was stupid, but I kept that thinking for 18 years of my life. I used to hear people say that pork was dirty. Some people even said that we don't eat it because pig skin/meat is very human like. Pigs are used for xenotransplantation for insulin and skin grafting in humans, so I used that excuse for a while."

It's true that pig organs are more similar to humans than other species of mammal that we consume for food. In addition to primates, pig skin and organs are the go-to for xenotransplantation. The real paradox with this argument is that it stands directly opposed to the concept that pigs are disgusting, shit-eating beasts, and yet the two are frequently used in tandem. To paraphrase several opinions, "They are filthy and filled with shit parasites, plus they're flesh is just like ours, so I don't eat it. BTW, this accepted contradiction has nothing to do with my religious conditioning."

The prevalence of this doublethink impresses me every time I encounter it. Many of these young Muslims are progressive thinkers on many fronts. They believe in evolution, they recognize that fundamentalism is a political perversion of their religion, and they break rules based on the real-life implications rather than the reasons listed in a 1400-year-old book. A lot of them wouldn't be considered Muslim by traditional Muslims. Like this guy:

"Drinking and fucking give you a euphoric type of high, but I don't get the same effect from eating pork or meat in general, so I have decided to limit my meat intake and seem to feel better in general consuming organic/free range poultry and seafood.As far as any moral issues, I know that consuming swine is deemed iniquitous in the fold of Islam but I am sure all the giant, juicy, throbbing dick I've had down my throat wasn't exactly halal either! …Hmm."

I left the "hmm" in that last quote because it could mean one of two things. It could signify that this kid is recognizing his contradictory thought pattern, following the path laid out by an ideology that conflicts with his sexuality. Or he's reminiscing about a giant, juicy, throbbing dick he once had down his throat. Either way, the inconsistencies are clear.

That's not to say that anyone's implementation of religious rules is wrong. One central aspect of Islam that me and others like myself sling to is that the faith fosters a "to each his own" attitude about spirituality. Whether you pick and choose your prohibitions, are forced to adapt belief to reality, or struggle to follow every letter of the law, you can still call yourself Muslim. Despite my transgressions, Islam is the only cultural belief system that my parents raised me with, so I still consider myself Muslim. It was a lot easier to convince others of that when I still followed at least one rule—abstinence from pork. As I mentioned, avoiding pork is the easiest one to stick to, based on the assumption that drunkenness and sex are too good to resist. Anyone who has avoided it forever has never bitten into perfectly cooked pork belly, or pulled the meat off a pork rib, or experienced something wrapped in bacon.

As with any abstinence, they have no idea what they're missing.