Kosher Eucharist / יוקאריסט כשר

Imagine a country in the South Pacific. Let’s call it… Zew Nealand. It’s larger, more populous, and more developed that other South Pacific nations, and it has a reasonably stable government. This government has the free time to create a number of useful agencies, including, say, a Food Safety Authority.

Now let’s imagine that someone from a blog - let’s call it Halal Shahadah - works there, and gets to read emails from people who write in:

“hi my name is _____ if someone is 25 weeks pregnant and there fridge has defrosted and the chicken has defrosted and become infected there is a smell and flies from the fridge will this affect the baby?”

Think about the fact that this woman will make a New Zew Nealander in less than four months’ time.

“hello how are sheeps slaughtered thanks”

Food Safety Authority, honey. Not butcherfaq.com. Why do you need to know this?

I had a request for all the deer slaughterhouses in the country (from “Team Meat”), and one man from India wanted to know the name of every place - every single one - that sold dairy products. A doctor in Hong Kong reported “oily diarrhea” in people who had eaten something called “oilfish,” and wanted to know the rules for labelling it. A man angry about genetically modified corn - which is not sold in Zew Nealand, to my knowledge - asked if “you are a Human being or an alien who doesnt care about health and your communitys.” Someone found rat shit in his cereal, ate some, vomited, and told us. A woman sought permission to import a “calming paste” for dogs and horses, to treat “anxiety, nervousness, distraction and stress.” The active ingredients are B-vitamins, tryptophan, and chamomile. A woman and her husband had eaten some fish and left some out for the cat. The next morning, they found the cat had disdained it and that it emitted a bright green glow. The woman asked if this meant it had mercury in it. (The terrifying answer is that there are some species of fish that glow when they decay.)

Sigh. The things I put up with to keep food safe here in Zew Nealand…

Hypothetically.

I can’t find a marriageable woman anywhere! I know, I know, those of you who know me from my wild study abroad period in Lebanon are shocked. “Heart-breaker, eye-contact-maker Karim!” you say. “I thought you were never going to marry! I thought you were going to remain a crazy bachelor and live with Doe-Eyed Ahmed and eat pizza and make rap about hadith!” And I was going to, but the recent actions in Lebanon of the Zionist Entity have made me realize I have a duty to Islam.

No, not that! Heart-breaker Karim wouldn’t waste his body on doing that. I talked about it a little, but Doe-Eyed Ahmed started to cry, and scream that I didn’t really love him if I was going to run off and blow myself up. I told him it would be in a public place in the West, maybe a marketplace or near a school, but he just cried harder and said that he didn’t care if I did it in the alley between an Israeli day care center and an American “titty bar” (what’s that?!), I didn’t really love him if I was going to leave him by himself in Beirut, where Christians occasionally emerge from their houses and might steal him to eat for dinner. He’s silly sometimes. Anyway, I came up with a better idea. We would both move to a new country, find some wives, and make new Muslim soldiers! I wanted to go to Bahrain (beaches!) but Ahmed said that we should find infidel wives, because… well, actually, I don’t know why. Something called “hybrid vigor?” And “marrying up?” I think he had had too much baklava! So we decided to go far, far away, and find ourselves each a set of wives in New Zealand.

Wow! New Zealand is CRAZY! We went to a movie! It had this whore of a British actress in it - her name is Judi Dench, or something? You could see her arms! I started to get that weird swelling I get sometimes when I see an American magazine or Ahmed sits around in his underwear putting on kohl. Do other people get that, where that part down there gets swollen and feels weird? Anyway, I was lucky that Ahmed was there to suck the poison out like he always does. He’s such a good friend. I think it’s contagious because I noticed he seemed to have the same problem… I asked him if I could help, but he said he’d just “drive stick?” We don’t even have a car!

Speaking of swelling, ALL GIRLS HAVE THOSE THINGS ON THEIR CHESTS! I thought that was an American thing, where their bodies were so full of pork and alcohol cocktails that they had to store it somewhere like a camel, but no! Apparently even the chaste, proper Saudi girls at home have them, you just can’t see them because of their dresses!

Speaking of girls, I just found out you have to MAKE babies. Ew! I thought they just happened! You have to BE NAKED ON YOUR WIFE! Nasty! Naked women are gross! I bet they have weird, different things on their bodies! I don’t know how I’ll stand it! Ahmed told me to close my eyes and think of him, and the fun we had on our “lost weekend” in Istanbul! We had to drink all this awful foamy water - it was kind of a yellow/tan color - and then we had this wrestling match that lasted for HOURS! I won! Though I think he might have let me. He’s such a good friend.

But I can’t be naked on one of my wives (ew) without even one! All the women here dress like whores, and walk around outside! By themselves! Some of them apparently have jobs, by which they earn money, which they spend on dressing like whores and drinking alcohol cocktails! Not ONE of them speaks Arabic, and when I asked the whore-lady at the store if a sausage roll was halal, she said, “No, they’re baked, I believe.” I went to a different store, and I saw that the man there was named Niwaz - hooray! I asked him what he was doing to bring about the downfall of the Great Satan, and he said, “I sell them cigarettes and potato chips. Buy something or get out.” So I bought Ahmed one of those joke magazines he likes. Why would a man wear a police hat and no other clothes? It’s silly!

Our luck finding wives here is so bad I think we might move on soon. I wanted to go to India, where there might be at least SOME nice girls, but then Ahmed started talking about the Netherlands. Apparently there’s a law there where two men can sign up that they live together and save money on taxes? This is good thinking! We could save enough to buy our own rocket launcher! I’m glad Ahmed read about that in his joke magazines. He’s such a good friend.

Oh, I have to go! The Miss United Arab Emirates pageant is on! the contestants go into separate rooms and write out parts of the Koran by memory. Best spelling wins, and goes on to compete in the Miss World pageant! I bet a Muslim country wins this year - these Kiwi girls don’t know ANY Koran!

-KaRiM