This week in the strange death of Europe: girl criticises halal meat in religious studies paper and gets disqualified

[Metaphor]

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/...ok-remarks-about-halal-meat-for-a4215746.html

A student was disqualified from her GCSE exam after she was accused of making “obscene racial comments” by criticising halal meat.
Abigail Ward, 16, a strict vegetarian, wrote during a Religious Studies exam in June that she found the idea of halal meat "absolutely disgusting".
The exam board OCR later disqualified Miss Ward from the exam, accusing her of making "obscene racial comments".
The decision was only overturned when her school, Gildredge House in Eastbourne, appealed the decision, insisting Miss Ward had been expressing her distaste for halal butchers and was not making any comment about Muslims.
The school added that no other comments made in the paper could be construed as racist.

The exam board upheld the appeal and later apologised for the “upset and stress” they caused Miss Ward, the Telegraph reported.
It also accepted that the board's original letter "describing the frequency and severity of the comments" was "inaccurate".

...In a statement, OCR said: "OCR takes all incidence of suspected offensive material against a religious group in exams very seriously and must apply rules which are set out for all exam boards in such cases.
"We accept that initially we did not reach the right conclusion and were too harsh."

I accept that I'm on the losing side of the cultural war in terms of rejecting the semantically ludicrous idea that criticising Islam or aspects of it is "racist". I accept that in this situation, an appeal of an awful decision resulted in the right outcome eventually.

But how did we get to this place in the West? I'm not a vegetarian or vegan, yet I oppose halal meat. I support the meat industry having humane standards. Halal meat makes the standards less humane than they could be. And of course all consumers of halal product pay the price for certification, whether they support it or not.

(I am not a libertarian and this post is not about my freedom to source only non-halal meat. My point is that religious strictures like halal meat are idiotic and the world would be better off if these idiotic strictures did not exist).

 

[Arctish]

How do you feel about kosher meat? And what is it about halal standards that you think makes the slaughtering animals in the food industry less humane?

 

[Metaphor]

How do you feel about kosher meat?

It too is a ridiculous religious stricture that causes unnecessary suffering to annimals, plus additional nonsense like not mixing dairy and meat.

And what is it about halal standards that you think makes the slaughtering animals in the food industry less humane?

Under Australian law, cattle must be stunned so that they are insensible to pain before slaughter, however some halal slaughter does not involve stunning (https://www.aussieabatthaoirs.com/facts/halal-kosher). These abattoirs have been given religious-based exceptions.

 

[Jarhyn]

I for one do not agree that we would be any better off with or without kosher or halal.

We are raising these animals in captivity from birth for slaughter. Through their lives we molest, rape, castrate, confine, burn, and slaughter them. We treat them, in short, like livestock. And in all of this, they STILL live safer, longer, more peaceful lives than their counterparts in nature.

So sure, busy yourself to some small aspect of the very end of an animal's life while being blind to all the rest, if that helps you feel better. The fact is, these animals are creatures that we have preemptively decided are meat with legs. They aren't people and they don't and can't contribute to society in the way people do.

The important part involving animals is to not allow people to behave towards them in a way that would cause erosion of the natural and cultural moral safeguards that prevent actual people from treating each other badly and without mercy, and to mitigate the effects that killing anything with a face generally has on people.

In the west, the "stunning" is the ritual which we apply to achieve that end. In the east, the ritual is the "Halal" or "kosher" ceremony. In the end they are both ethically meaningless; they exist merely to produce a ceremony that mitigates the erosion of morality and the stress/guilt.

To that end, all I really care about is if the process helps mitigate the negative effects of the industry on people. It obviously isn't really for the cattle; if it was, we would stop killing and eating them

 

[Trausti]

The issue here isn’t the ethics of Halal, right? It’s that some Western countries have adopted quasi-blasphemy laws protecting only one particular religion from scrutiny?

 

[ZiprHead]

Damn, the politics forum has sure gotten whiny.

 

[Jarhyn]

The issue here isn’t the ethics of Halal, right? It’s that some Western countries have adopted quasi-blasphemy laws protecting only one particular religion from scrutiny?

The issue here is that certain people seem unable to parse that the process of slaughter needs merely to incorporate a ritual that mitigates the harm inflicted by slaughter on the people, not the animals.

If you wanted a real answer, you would work towards producing a study on which process involves the least impact on people on the dimensions of trauma and erosion of empathy towards people.

I wonder in the end which process is most effective there, and you haven't offered any evidence or model that would support a conclusion of which is better or worse; for all we know at this point, the coupling of religious beliefs and holy ritual may work better.

 

[laughing dog]

Damn, the politics forum has sure gotten whiny.

And petty. After all, this mistake was rectified. The notion that every person and institution must always be correct and that any deviation for an ideal is a necessary indicator of the eminent destruction of civilization is a prime example of snowflakecity.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

The day will come when people will look back on history with horror and not be able to fathom how people ever raised and tortured and killed animals, who clearly could suffer and experience pain and trauma, just to eat or to test cosmetics, etc. That day is coming sooner than you may think too, with lab grown meat and vegetarianism steadily increasing.

Also, to say that we already do horrible things to animals or that they live horrible lives in nature (so would we if not for modern technology) excuses additional unneeded and unjustifiable pain band suffering for religious reasons, doesn't compute. Bad doesnt excuse more bad.

Also, as noted above this is also a story about religious reference. Had this student written merely about eating meat period and not mentioned Halal or Islam, does anyone here really think this incident would have occurred?

 

[Metaphor]

The issue here isn’t the ethics of Halal, right? It’s that some Western countries have adopted quasi-blasphemy laws protecting only one particular religion from scrutiny?

My intention in posting the OP was as an incident to do with the erosion of the ability to criticise religion, yes. Not about the ethics of halal in general (though I oppose it).

 

[Metaphor]

That ... any deviation for an ideal is a necessary indicator of the eminent destruction of civilization is a prime example of snowflakecity.

The disqualification of a student's exam, by the State, for criticising religion may be a non-affair to some people, but to be concerned about it is not the same as believing it is one of the horsemen of the apocalypse.

 

[laughing dog]

That ... any deviation for an ideal is a necessary indicator of the eminent destruction of civilization is a prime example of snowflakecity.

The disqualification of a student's exam, by the State, for criticising religion may be a non-affair to some people, but to be concerned about it is not the same as believing it is one of the horsemen of the apocalypse.

The "But how did we get to this place in the West? " is a pretty good imitation of it.

BTW, your response is even more evidence. "the State" admitted to mistakenly disqualifying the exam. You'd have a real concern if "the State" had not. But since "the State" did, all you have is an overzealous individual, not some invidious application of "political correctness".

 

[Metaphor]

That ... any deviation for an ideal is a necessary indicator of the eminent destruction of civilization is a prime example of snowflakecity.

The disqualification of a student's exam, by the State, for criticising religion may be a non-affair to some people, but to be concerned about it is not the same as believing it is one of the horsemen of the apocalypse.

The "But how did we get to this place in the West? " is a pretty good imitation of it.

BTW, your response is even more evidence. "the State" admitted to mistakenly disqualifying the exam. You'd have a real concern if "the State" had not. But since "the State" did, all you have is an overzealous individual, not some invidious application of "political correctness".

The overzealous individual represented the State in that interaction. This overzealous individual must also have had a supervisor who agreed with her, and almost certainly more people. I assume an individual marker can't just disqualify an entire exam paper based on her word alone.

But sure, nothing to see here.

 

[laughing dog]

The "But how did we get to this place in the West? " is a pretty good imitation of it.

BTW, your response is even more evidence. "the State" admitted to mistakenly disqualifying the exam. You'd have a real concern if "the State" had not. But since "the State" did, all you have is an overzealous individual, not some invidious application of "political correctness".

The overzealous individual represented the State in that interaction. This overzealous individual must also have had a supervisor who agreed with her, and almost certainly more people. I assume an individual marker can't just disqualify an entire exam paper based on her word alone.

But sure, nothing to see here.

You admit you really have no evidence to support your reaction - assumptions are not evidence of reality.

Someone goofed up. The mistake was caught and rectified. Pointing that out is one thing. Asking "But how did we get to this place in the West?" is another.

 

[Metaphor]

You admit you really have no evidence to support your reaction - assumptions are not evidence of reality.

I know how exams are marked in Australia for high school students. In any remotely 'subjective' subject, at least two markers mark an exam. If the exam marks for a particular response differs by more than a specified amount, a third, senior marker marks the exam.

If a single marker was allowed to disqualify an entire exam, no questions asked, then that's a big problem. If she had a supervisor and other people agree with her, that's a bigger problem.

Someone goofed up.

No. A goof up is accidentally enter a mark of 10 when you meant to enter 100. Reading a response to a particular question and instantly imagining that any criticism of religion is racism, and being able to disqualify a paper based on that, is not a "goof up".

The mistake was caught and rectified. Pointing that out is one thing. Asking "But how did we get to this place in the West?" is another.

And my question still stands. How did we get to this place? How did we get to a place where exam papers can be disqualified and where it is widely accepted that criticism of religion is racist? Either you have something to say about it or you don't. Attacking me personally doesn't answer that question.

 

[laughing dog]

I know how exams are marked in Australia for high school students. In any remotely 'subjective' subject, at least two markers mark an exam. If the exam marks for a particular response differs by more than a specified amount, a third, senior marker marks the exam.

If a single marker was allowed to disqualify an entire exam, no questions asked, then that's a big problem. If she had a supervisor and other people agree with her, that's a bigger problem.

You'd have a real point if there was no appeal process. Since there is, you don't.

No. A goof up is accidentally enter a mark of 10 when you meant to enter 100....

It was a mistake. That was caught and rectified.

And my question still stands. How did we get to this place? How did we get to a place where exam papers can be disqualified and where it is widely accepted that criticism of religion is racist? Either you have something to say about it or you don't. Attacking me personally doesn't answer that question.

I did say something about it - it was mistake, it was caught and rectified.

Claiming your response is hysterical is not a personal attack. But your snowflake response is duly noted.

 

[Metaphor]

You'd have a real point if there was no appeal process. Since there is, you don't.


It was a mistake. That was caught and rectified.

And my question still stands. How did we get to this place? How did we get to a place where exam papers can be disqualified and where it is widely accepted that criticism of religion is racist? Either you have something to say about it or you don't. Attacking me personally doesn't answer that question.

I did say something about it - it was mistake, it was caught and rectified.

Claiming your response is hysterical is not a personal attack. But your snowflake response is duly noted.

Sure, and that's not a personal attack either.

 

[Derec]

The issue here isn’t the ethics of Halal, right? It’s that some Western countries have adopted quasi-blasphemy laws protecting only one particular religion from scrutiny?

Indeed. The main issue is that any criticism of Islam or its practices is taken to be "racist" and thus disallowed. Voluntary dhimmitude by Europeans.

Damn, the politics forum has sure gotten whiny.

This is a legitimate issue and there is nothing whiny about discussing it.

 

[Patooka]

That ... any deviation for an ideal is a necessary indicator of the eminent destruction of civilization is a prime example of snowflakecity.

The disqualification of a student's exam, by the State, for criticising religion may be a non-affair to some people, but to be concerned about it is not the same as believing it is one of the horsemen of the apocalypse.

The title of this thread starts off with "This week in the strange death of Europe:" To claim that Europe is dying because a mistake in grading a paper was rectified is about as hyperbolic as you can get.

 

[Toni]

That ... any deviation for an ideal is a necessary indicator of the eminent destruction of civilization is a prime example of snowflakecity.

The disqualification of a student's exam, by the State, for criticising religion may be a non-affair to some people, but to be concerned about it is not the same as believing it is one of the horsemen of the apocalypse.

But that was the error: She didn't criticize religion, she criticized a particular practice of butchering animals. I'm fairly certain that she would have likewise criticized kosher butchering practices as well as more commonplace, non-religious based butchery.

ld is correct in his assessment.