Living with the Enemy on SBS

[ufo_investigations]

I just watched LIVING WITH THE ENEMY on SBS.  The story about Ben the Aussie going to live with Lidia and Ahmed the muslims. Lidia is an Aussie and was raised Catholic and converted to Islam. Ahmed was born in Saudi Arabia.

What did I learn?

- Muslim women wont shake hands with a male person their not related to. (Very rude).

- When husband and wife muslims pray in their own house, the wife has to pray behind her husband. (Women are not treated as equals even in their own house).

- Christians are not allowed to visit Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Why? Because you have to be muslim to be allowed.

- Mosques can be built all over Australia but we can't build a Church in Saudi Arabia.

- The Quran tells muslims to kill people.

- In the mosque women are behind the curtain at the back. It's their own area. Why? Because the men have to be in a different section. Why? To give women privacy. This is the reason they cited. The real reason I believe is not to cause desire in the men.

- When they went shopping they visited a halal butcher to buy lamb shoulder. Ben wasn't consulted. What if he wanted pork chops?

- They went to Bondi to do an "Aussie thing called surfing". Lidia went swimming in her full Islamic clothing then when she came out of the water she placed a towel around her depicting the Australian flag.

[boris1gary]

ufoinvestigations, your team Australia must be shrinking by the day, how many Aussies according to your definition of how Australian an Australian is are in this team? I heard there was only 144,000 or is that the Jehovah witnesses?

[i-need-a-martini]

UFO - they did not take him shopping. They bought (like most people do I imagine) from their local butcher. Not everyone buys coles/woolies groceries - we certainly don't. And who buys their meat from IGA??

And I will remind you that the whoe point of the show was for him to immerse himself in their culture. That would mean food as well right?

And its isn't too hard to figure out why her friend shook his hand. It's a bit like why some Catholics go to church weekly and some go Christmas/Easter. 

[ufo_investigations]

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@i-need-a-martini wrote:

UFO - they did not take him shopping. They bought (like most people do I imagine) from their local butcher. Not everyone buys coles/woolies groceries - we certainly don't. And who buys their meat from IGA??

And I will remind you that the whoe point of the show was for him to immerse himself in their culture. That would mean food as well right?

And its isn't too hard to figure out why her friend shook his hand. It's a bit like why some Catholics go to church weekly and some go Christmas/Easter. 

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Mainstream Australia does not shop at islamic butchers. A lot of people wont buy or eat foods of halal origin. Some people believe in their own God and wont worship someone elses God. All they had to do was buy meat from a neutral butchers not a religious one and shake his hand when they met and Ben would have been more accepting I think. Ben actually had a lot of patience to get as far as he did. I would have walked out when the handshake was refused.

[i-need-a-martini]

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@ufo_investigations wrote:

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Mainstream Australia does not shop at islamic butchers. A lot of people wont buy or eat foods of halal origin. Some people believe in their own God and wont worship someone elses God. All they had to do was buy meat from a neutral butchers not a religious one and shake his hand when they met and Ben would have been more accepting I think. Ben actually had a lot of patience to get as far as he did. I would have walked out when the handshake was refused.

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I will repeat - he was a guest in their house. He was there to live with them and indulge in their way of life for 10 days in order to get a better understanding of their culture. I would have thought that meant eating their food and observing their customs and practices.

Part of their culture is a) they eat halal and b) women do not make contact with men aside from their husbands, fathers and brothers.

But you are right - mainstream Australia does not shop at halal butchers. They don't need to because their culture does not require them to.

And you are also right that there are a lot of (IMO ignorant) people who will not eat halal because of misconceptions about the way a cow is killed. A misconception that is widely acknowledged to be incorrect in this country.

But I am interested to know what you expected Lydia to prepare for her family whilst he was in the house? Was she to forgo all halal food and make everyone eat something that is clearly against their religion? Or did you expect her to to prepare (and thus handle) non halal food even though her religion would not allow it? Or perhaps he should have brought his own non-halal food and fed himself?

And as far as handshaking goes, I wonder if Ben would have been quite as indignant if he had met a Jewish woman and she had refused to shake hands with him? Or what if he met a Russian of any sex and decided to shake his/her hand - the Russian would soon tell him know how rude he is. The latter I know from experience from a Russian friend. And lets not forget that in Thai and Indian cultures, shaking someones hand is disrespectful.

[iapetus_rocks]

And lets not forget that in Thai and Indian cultures, shaking someones hand is disrespectful.

And in our Australian culture it is disrespectful to refuse to shake someone's hand if a hand is offered. So, what are we to do, are we to study hard to gain a knowledge of the cultural mores of the many different people from other cultures who live here and then bend over backwards to accomodate them and not offer offense, or should we (reasonably, in my opinion) just be true to our own cultural mores and be honest about it?

Who was it who made the original statement, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do"?

If I go overseas, I endeavour to respect others' customs and if people come here, then I expect reciprocation. Is that too much to ask?

[ufo_investigations]

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@i-need-a-martini wrote:

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@ufo_investigations wrote:

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Mainstream Australia does not shop at islamic butchers. A lot of people wont buy or eat foods of halal origin. Some people believe in their own God and wont worship someone elses God. All they had to do was buy meat from a neutral butchers not a religious one and shake his hand when they met and Ben would have been more accepting I think. Ben actually had a lot of patience to get as far as he did. I would have walked out when the handshake was refused.

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I will repeat - he was a guest in their house. He was there to live with them and indulge in their way of life for 10 days in order to get a better understanding of their culture. I would have thought that meant eating their food and observing their customs and practices.

Part of their culture is a) they eat halal and b) women do not make contact with men aside from their husbands, fathers and brothers.

But you are right - mainstream Australia does not shop at halal butchers. They don't need to because their culture does not require them to.

And you are also right that there are a lot of (IMO ignorant) people who will not eat halal because of misconceptions about the way a cow is killed. A misconception that is widely acknowledged to be incorrect in this country.

But I am interested to know what you expected Lydia to prepare for her family whilst he was in the house? Was she to forgo all halal food and make everyone eat something that is clearly against their religion? Or did you expect her to to prepare (and thus handle) non halal food even though her religion would not allow it? Or perhaps he should have brought his own non-halal food and fed himself?

And as far as handshaking goes, I wonder if Ben would have been quite as indignant if he had met a Jewish woman and she had refused to shake hands with him? Or what if he met a Russian of any sex and decided to shake his/her hand - the Russian would soon tell him know how rude he is. The latter I know from experience from a Russian friend. And lets not forget that in Thai and Indian cultures, shaking someones hand is disrespectful.

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Roman Catholics for example have to follow 'The First Commandment of God' and as such will not buy or eat anything halal. Catholics are not allowed to follow other Gods.

ARTICLE 1
THE FIRST COMMANDMENT (this is not the full text).

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them.

It is written: "You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve."

I. "YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD AND HIM ONLY SHALL YOU SERVE"

As for your question about what was Lidia supposed to do? I don't know. Maybe she should have bent the rules to accomodate Ben. They could have purchased lamb from a neutral butchers and pronounced "misbillah" over it or buy halal food for themselves and then purchased meat for Ben at coles. They knew Ben was coming over so why didn't they have halal meat in the fridge for themselves and then went to buy meat for Ben at coles or other neutral shop.

[karliandjacko]

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@iapetus_rocks wrote:

And lets not forget that in Thai and Indian cultures, shaking someones hand is disrespectful.

And in our Australian culture it is disrespectful to refuse to shake someone's hand if a hand is offered. So, what are we to do, are we to study hard to gain a knowledge of the cultural mores of the many different people from other cultures who live here and then bend over backwards to accomodate them and not offer offense, or should we (reasonably, in my opinion) just be true to our own cultural mores and be honest about it?

Who was it who made the original statement, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do"?

If I go overseas, I endeavour to respect others' customs and if people come here, then I expect reciprocation. Is that too much to ask?

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Since when has it been Aussie custom to shake hands? It's an individual thing.  It's a relatively new concept for a male to shake hands with a woman.

[goldenjet16]

Iapetus,

If I could give you 2 kudos I would have. Well said!

[i-need-a-martini]

But surely in Australia if a woman politely explains why she is unable to shake hands (whether that woman is Muslim, Indian or Thai), then you, as an Australian, would respect her cultural difference?

It's not as if she threw her hands up and ran off. Or screamed as he came towards her. Or showed the guy any sort of disrespect. She smiled and politely explained why she was unabe to shake his hand. If I recall correctly he thrust his hand out again then told her she was being unautralisn if she didn't shake his hand. The guy was a moron.

At a Russian friends party many years ago, I went to shake the hand of one of her relatives. He politely told me that Russians do not shake hands. My response was "Well waddya know. You learn something new every day." It didn't occur to me to be offended - I just notched it up as an interesting fact about another culture that I didn't know before.

And you don't have to go to India or Thailand to get a whiff of someone elses culture. My sister in law is Indian. Whilst she shakes hands, her family does not. When we meet, we smile and nod hello to them and they bring their hands together in greeting.

And I suspect that the moron in the show would have reacted exactly as I did in the above scenarios EXCEPT that in this case the woman was muslim so to him this was simply another notch on his list reason to be anti-islamic.

And I should also point out that shaking hands with women in this country is not a general custom although it is becoming more widespread outside of business. In fact many men that I meet in my business take a while to catch on when I put my hand out in order for them to shake it. And many refuse often for the simple reason that I am a woman working in a male dominated environment. That level of rudeness is quite widespread in the building industry because it is purposely disrespectful.

[iapetus_rocks]

Since when has it been Aussie custom to shake hands? It's an individual thing.  It's a relatively new concept for a male to shake hands with a woman.

I'm not really sure, but I think it is a very old custom, though in Oz, that custom can only be about 240 yrs old. 😉

I offered my hand to a Muslim woman, after I had shaken hands with her husband and her son, and she took my hand. I admit I did it as a display. I refused to accept the implied negation of the female presence in our meeting. I don't know how the people involved thought about it because I didn't ask.