Ignorance is no longer Funny

During my last class, a classmate offered me green tea flavored marshmallow. Growing used to the picnic mode of my classmates in general, I am far from embarrassed when asking for food. Usually I just poke the person next to me, hold out my hand and grin. They would promptly pass me the food, usually without even looking.

But this marshmallow I had to be wary of. One of the main ingredients in marshmallows is gelatine. And as you may know, the cheapest source of gelatine is always pork fat. Some gelatines are made from a combination of cattle and pork fat or just cattle fat. But that cattle needed to be properly slaughtered before I can consume any part of its body. It had to be halal.

Since this marshmallow was of Japanese origin, I looked through the ingredients list quickly before my classmate handed it to me. Indeed, it contained gelatine. So I apologized and had to refuse. But she couldn't just let the matter rest. She read through the ingredients list again and argued that the other ingredients were plants-based. And that the gelatine might be vegetable gelatine as well. She engaged the opinions (support) of another similarly ignorant person and disucssed it to no avail, after which she offered them to me again. Seriously, did she want me to publicly decline her again loudly?

The marshmallows did its rounds around the classroom while I helped myself to someone else's potato chips (Our 5-minute break time is really like a picnic time and even during the fasting month I hardly bring food to class). I apologized again for refusing (since I am not insensitive even though I was the one offended) and she had them offered those scandalous marshmallows to another Muslim in the class. A Malay guy. I repeated to them twice those marshmallows are not halal, apologized (again) and the guy took to reading the ingredients list first. But damn him! He popped one into his damn mouth!

Now this gave me two problems. The marshmallows were obviously not halal, yet this guy, who was older than me (but obviously none the wiser) ate them, and I didn't. They started questioning me why I wouldn't eat it while he did. I seriously wanted to ask him the same question too, but I was not that insensitive. It would open another can of worms and a discussion regarding how halal meat was prepared already started without my participation. At least sensei was already informed of the process but people kept mistaking Malays for Muslims. One is a race, another a religion, and in case you didn't know, there is a Malay Christian Church in Malaysia. It seems like in the topic of halalness other people were more knowledgable than me, the only Muslim in the class who didn't eat the damned marshmallows!

But damn it! Because of that damned guy eating those damned marshmallows half the class asked me on and on why I can't just eat the marshmallow because the gelatine might be vegetarian or of cow origin.

At the same time, why don't you just offer me roast pork then there? Or offer beef steak to a Hindu? Or a fish to a vegetarian? Or vegetables to a fruitarian!?

This classmate is normally a nice person, but why must you put me on the spot with your ignorance just because I refused your offensive marshmallows? I went through a religious school system from kindergarten till highschool, yet I fully realized that there are people out there with different needs and beliefs than me. Before I came to KL I didn't know about Hindus and cow meat, but once I knew I kept it in mind because Sarawak has a negligible number of Hindus. Yet you, who grew up in this freaking Peninsular with a higher rate of religious diversity and high concentration of Muslim conservatives could not understand why I would refuse something that you thought I suspect might contain pork fat?!

Pissed me off. And this damn guy is going to get it. He will definitely get it for making me look bad in front of the class and sensei. He. Will. Get. IT!

Hmph.