As a Muslim, it’s a pain in the ass sometimes trying to find Halal food. Not in Singapore, but overseas. In Singapore, finding out what’s Halal or not is tremendously easy; just find the label. MUIS’ pretty trustworthy and through in their vetting process of who they award that certification to, so I’m never in doubt of a shop’s status if I see that little green label, even if it’s from Chinese food producers like You Tiao Man.
Not so with the person this post is about.
Apparently, somebody out there (who works for PCF Sparkletots) saw a Channel NewsAsia report about You Tiao Man (not a superhero name sadly) and their manufacturing process and got triggered (or curious) when she saw a worker (who also has a tattoo) handling you tiao by hand.
The ‘issue’ here is twofold; questioning the hygiene and the tattoo.
First is the handling of food by hand, second is the tattoo.
Despite current mindset, tattoos are haram (forbidden) in Islam. So the issue here would probably have been that as the tattoos are haram, food touched by the hands with the tattoo is too.
That’s a stupid way of looking at things, according to Netizens.
Even Muslims are making their views known about how stupid that view is.
Netizens (Muslims and otherwise) all agree that the sender of the email needs to learn more about Halal certification and what constitutes as Halal and Haram. You’d expect there to be burns and sarcastic remarks galore, but from what I’ve seen, it’s the opposite.
All are united in condemning the ignorance in the questions but quite a few think that the sender didn’t mean it in an insensitive way.
That’s mainly due to the vague nature of the email.
The bad grammar has quite a few Netizens arguing that the sender’s grasp of English might have interfered with getting her point across. Perhaps she didn’t mean to send an inflammatory email at all, but due to her limited grasp of the language, just made it seem that way.
Instead, maybe the point of the email was to highlight the issues that concerned the sender, just as the hygiene.
It’s certainly a valid opinion. Take a look at the email again with this point of view and you can easily understand why some Netizens might think this way.
In fact, many are questioning the CEO’s motives. They think that she’s making a mountain out of molehill.
These Netizens claim that the CEO of You Tiao Man should’ve just kept the matter confidential and with it out of the public view. It’s just a matter of inquiry from one of the public and shouldn’t have been blown up out of proportions.
Of course, there’s another segment of Netizens think that the CEO did the right thing here.
No matter what though, everybody seems to agree on one thing; using work email to send a personal message is a big no-no.
Using a professional email makes it seem as if the organization the sender works for condones it.
Needless to say, that wasn’t the case here, with PCF Sparkletots having issued a statement saying that the employee who sent the message has been sent for counselling due to her actions.
Hopefully that doesn’t mean the sender has been fired…The email is filled with ignorance but that doesn’t mean it was sent with malice.
Educating the sender would be a better response than a firing.
Still…to make sure something like this never occurs like this again, Sim Oliver Oliver has a damn great suggestion.
I think most of the men would be in agreement of this. Women too, if it included handsome men hawkers! Maybe we all should be sending emails to our ministers for this!
Just make sure your English is ok first to prevent misunderstandings!