alexpgp | The Politics of HateHam...

From the Sun Journal, Maine:

On April 11, a white student placed a ham steak in a bag on a lunch table where Somali students were eating. Muslims consider pork unclean and offensive. [...] The school incident is being treated seriously as “a hate incident,” Levesque said. Lewiston police are investigating, and the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence is working with the school to create a response plan. [...] Placing ham where Muslim students were eating was “an awful thing,” said Stephen Wessler, executive director of the Center for Prevention of Hate Violence. “It’s extraordinarily hurtful and degrading” to Muslims, whose religion prohibits them from being around ham. It’s important to respond swiftly, Wessler said.

Words fail me.

Okay, kids can be - and are - cruel. And throwing a piece of ham on the table - bag or no - was probably a boneheaded stunt no matter who was sitting at the table. Still, what ever happened to common sense?

They've got the cops investigating this?

Sure, the kids this happened to make it sound like they're scarred for life, and maybe in today's victim-friendly culture, its' not such a bad story to stick to, politically. But seriously, if you start treating every juvenile cruelty as a crime, you're either going to have one busy police department or... you're going to favor one group (or groups) over others.

Protein Wisdom has an interesting take on this:

Of course, Kosher-keeping Jews who’ve assimilated into public schools have been subjected to sightings of the unholy alliance of meat and cheese, the arrogant parading (by unclean Goyim) of ham sandwiches—even, in some cases, the presence of breakfast sausages!—for what seems like decades.

Which raises an interesting point: Does Islam actually prohibit its believers from "being around" ham?

I predict this kind of idiocy is only going to get worse, and that more people will jump on the bandwagon. Awful? Hurtful? Degrading? Just wait until the next Andres Serrano comes around with a new, improved version of "Piss Christ" - it'll be the turn of Christians to call on the Center for Prevention of Hate Violence (which, however, will very likely ignore such a complaint, if the pattern holds, and may even say something about the sacredness of "freedom of expression").

Aha. My "personal settings" have finally finished loading on my work computer.

Cheers...