JEDDAH, 24 November 2006 — The ridiculous incident that was reported by Phiippine media on Tuesday that Lanao del Sur Representative Faysah Dumarpa had allegedly pointed a knife at Virginia Altamirano, a waitress of the Shangri-la Chine Cuisine, after she was served pork during a dinner with other lawmakers at the House on Monday, made me laugh; it was so silly!
The waitress went to a local police station to file a complaint against Dumarpa for allegedly hitting her in the face, throwing a glass of water at her and waving a knife menacingly at her.
The Muslim congresswoman denies hitting the poor waitress, but admits that she threw the glass of water onto the floor and that she indeed had a knife in her hand at the time of her outburst.
In a nasty letter to the owner of the restaurant, Dumarpa demanded that the staff involved in serving the lunch all be sacked for serving her pork, either knowingly or through incompetence, even though she claims to have asked several of the staff whether any of the dishes contained pork.
“What I did after that was my natural reaction on a situation where I felt betrayed,” she said in her letter to the restaurant owner, Ramon Sy. “I was grossly insulted, and I assumed your crew members purposely caused that by intentional concealment of the fact herein set forth. If not at all intentional, then there must have been gross negligence on their part,” Dumarpa said.
The lawmaker explained that for Muslims, eating pork and its derivatives was forbidden in Islam and considered a “grievous sin” in the religion. She said an intentional consumption of meat would hinder her from gaining entrance to paradise.
“Intentional” is the key word here. I can surely say that her eating pork in this instance was NOT intentional, so I don’t see how her entrance to Heaven would be jeopardized by eating pork by mistake. I would instead suggest to her that slapping a defenseless waitress in the face, shouting like a crazed person and throwing a glass of water on the floor in a scandalous fashion, is what surely would keep her out of Paradise!
Fellow Lanao del Sur Rep. Benasing Macarambon also attended this luncheon, and was reported as saying that eating pork accidentally was allegedly more upsetting to him and other Muslims than catching their spouses with another person! What nonsense! How is accidentally eating pork now WORSE than catching your spouse committing adultery? The logic escapes me here.
In a country where the majority of the population loves anything porky, and where the national dish is lechon de leche, I am not surprised that Muslim politicians often find pork lurking in the food that is served to them. As my father always told me, eating pork unknowingly was okay, as long as one stopped eating the dish as soon as we found out it contained pork.
Instead of slapping hapless waiters and throwing tantrums in public, Muslim politicians would do better to have someone inspect the kitchen while their food is being prepared, or better yet, bring their own halal, pork-free food with them to avoid any such mix-ups in the future.
On Wednesday, the restaurant accused of serving pork to Dumarpa announced that it was suspending its services from the House of Representatives in order to protect its staff from the threats of physical violence coming from Dumarpa and her supporters.
Dumarpa, who is 54 and serving her second term in Congress, ironically told the website IslamOnLine.net in a July 13, 2006, article on her proposal to set up a state-run Islamic university in the Philippines, that “remember, real Islam shuns violence.”
If only she had followed her own advice and not slapped Altamirano, shouted and thrown the glass of water on the floor, Muslims all around the world would not have to cringe at such uncivilized behavior. Dumarpa owes the waitress an apology and an immediate cessation of threats of violence, end of story.
IF YOU don’t live in Saudi Arabia, you probably haven’t heard about the case of the Filipino woman Rose Al-Saihati who recently was illegally smuggled out of the country with her three children using papers bearing false names.
Her Saudi husband, Ali Al-Saihati, is furious with the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh, whom he accuses of helping his wife flee the country with their children. But let’s backtrack a few weeks first to fully explain what happened.
Rose’s husband first approached the authorities after his wife and children went missing last month.
The police and immigration authorities told Ali that they had no record of them leaving the country, and that they would keep an eye out for her. Ali later offered $10,000 to anyone who could provide him information about the whereabouts of his missing family.
Sure enough, his wife and kids surfaced in the Philippines a few weeks later and Ali angrily attacked the Philippine Embassy for allegedly helping them escape from the Kingdom.
Now, the Saudi Ambassador in Manila, Muhammad Amin Wali, told the Saudi newspaper Al-Yaum that after speaking himself with Rose that he found out that the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh did in fact help her and her children leave the country illegally and that Saudi authorities will be investigating how this was allowed to happen.
Rose claims that she left Ali because he used to beat her and that she was extremely unhappy when he married an Indonesian woman as his second wife, a practice allowed in Islam and under Saudi law.
It is unfortunate that under the Kingdom’s laws, guardianship of children is usually awarded to the father in divorce cases, which is what most likely prompted Rose to sneak out of the country with her children.
This story of families torn apart because of cultural differences is not unique to Ali and Rose. Many other marriages between Saudis and foreigners have similarly foundered and turned into bitter custody battles between mothers and fathers. Saudi courts should change the way they render decisions in custody cases, and take into account the need for foreign mothers to have easy access to their children in the Kingdom, if not joint custody, when their marriages to Saudi men end in divorce.
A more flexible and understanding legal system would surely avoid such desperate actions like that of Rose, who has now denied Ali his unalienable right as a father to see his own children grow up. What a shame.
Comments or questions? Email me at: [email protected]. Visit my blog at: http://rasheedsworld.blogspot.com.
