Woman in jilbab serving nasi uduk with pork stirs online outrage, halal watchdog calls for dish’s ‘purification’

Recently, there has been a fair bit of online outrage over a photo of a woman serving nasi uduk with pork in West Jakarta.

While there’s of course nothing inherently wrong with serving haram food, the reason the image was controversial because the server was a woman in a jilbab.

 

 

After that post went viral, questions were raised as to why the woman served food that is forbidden by her religion. People theorized online that she could be an Orthodox Christian, whose female believers may also wear jilbabs, or that she is a Muslim but merely an employee at the stand.

The latter appeared to be case, as explained by the owners of the stand on Facebook:

 

 

The owners, a Charismatic Christian couple, explained in the post that the woman is indeed Muslim who choose to work for them. However, they made sure that the woman would not have to come into physical contact with the pork by giving her tongs to serve it and cleaning up pork-taminated dishes themselves.

In response to the online outrage, some, such as Pemuda Muhammadiyah, argued that sometimes Muslims choose to work with pork because they could not find other employment, and that people should be considerate before they judge others so harshly.

Unfortunately, it seems like the haters’ outrage cost the woman in the picture her job. As of May 20, the owners said they’re no longer employing the woman after taking advice from their Muslim friends that Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to serve haram food.

Case closed, right? Nope, some people are still piggybacking on this issue to create even more controversy.

A group calling themselves Indonesia Halal Watch yesterday called for the “purification” of nasi uduk, i.e. not allowing it to be served with pork. The reason is because, according to them, culinary tradition dictates that nasi uduk be served with halal proteins like chicken or beef.

“Its essence must be straightened out because there’s a worry that [nasi uduk] will be contaminated, from what was once understood as a halal dish into something that’s unclean,” said Indonesia Halal Watch Executive Director Ikhsan Abdullah, as quoted by Republika yesterday.

To Ikhsan, his argument stands even though the nasi uduk babi stand clearly advertised that their dish contained pork.

“That is because the public knows that nasi uduk is halal. So if they don’t see the [pork] label, they’ll go ahead and eat it,” he said.

Frankly, this writer, who is a Muslim, is offended that the Indonesia Halal Watch thinks their fellow Muslims are illiterate and can’t make up our own minds about what’s halal or haram.



Reader Interactions

Leave A Reply


BECOME A COCO+ MEMBER

Support local news and join a community of like-minded
“Coconauts” across Southeast Asia and Hong Kong.

Join Now
Coconuts TV
Our latest and greatest original videos
Subscribe on