I always enjoy lunch with him for the conversations that we have.
This was one of my favorites.
He said, “Why are pigs haram?”
I said, “Because it’s not clean, and our religion likes cleanliness. A lot.”
“Why is it unclean?”
“Because pigs don’t sweat. They don’t have perspiration glands. So all of the dirty stuff that’s supposed to be excreted from the body as sweat, are actually mounded under the skin as fat, a.k.a lard; the thing that makes New Orleans dishes so tasty. It’s actually the same thing that makes canine snouts unclean, because that’s the ‘sweat’ orifice.”
“So why can’t we eat dogs? If it’s just the saliva and snout that’s unclean, why can’t we eat the rest of it?”
“Because dogs are carnivores.”
“So?”
“Carnivores eat raw meat. Raw meat contains blood. Blood is unclean because of all the medical reasons why you can’t just transmit blood between people without testing it first.”
“But we eat poultry! Poultry eat worms and bugs!”
“And worms and bugs don’t bleed the way a prey would when hunted by carnivores.”
His reaction was so cute.
First he made a nod/shrug.
Then he mumbled “makes-sense-to-me-and-this-I-can-buy.”
Then he finished his lunch thinking about Saksang.
*Note: Saksang is an Indonesian dish, consisting of pork meat, cooked in pig blood.
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