Allah stop playing with your food
Let’s see – fish? Check. Barrel? Check. Shooter? Check.
But what else can I do?
Diners have been flocking to a restaurant in northern Nigeria to see pieces of meat which the owner says are inscribed with the name of Allah. What looks like the Arabic word for God and the name of the prophet Muhammad were discovered in pieces of beef by a diner in Birnin Kebbi. He was about to eat it, when he suddenly noticed the words in the gristle, the restaurant owner said.
Ah, in the gristle – that’s a nice touch. I remember gristle from my childhood – I was always spitting it out, and having to be instructed in the polite way to remove gristle from the mouth and leave it daintily on the edge of the plate. Funny that Allah chose the gristle instead of the nice chewable meat. Maybe it was a precaution against being accidentally or blasphemously eaten. Imagine the horror if some apostate or kafir in Birnin Kebbi spotted the name and just went ‘Ha, Allah’s name, yum yum,’ and gobbled it down with some horseradish. Thinks of everything, that Allah. Well, everything except a slightly more exciting or in the public eye place to do his gristle-signing.
The meat was boiled and then fried before being served, owner Kabiru Haliru told newspaper Weekly Trust. “When the writings were discovered there were some Islamic scholars who come and eat here and they all commented that it was a sign to show that Islam is the only true religion for mankind,” he said.
Ah yes, quite right too. Of course it was! Because what else would Allah do to give a sign to show that Islam is the only true religion for mankind? Write his name in letters of fire across the night sky, high enough and large enough for a whole hemisphere to read? Send his only begotten daughter to be tortured to death? Dictate another really boring book about camels and finance? Pick up the Chrysler building and move it to Ponca City Oklahoma? Issue the 11th commandment, forbidding people to wear their baseball caps backward? Of course not. The only sensible way to give a sign to show that Islam is the only true religion for mankind is to write your name and your prophet’s name on three pieces of meat the gristle thereof in the kitchen of a restaurant in Birnin Kebbi, Nigeria.
A vet told the newspaper the words “defied scientific explanation”. “Supposing only one piece of meat was found then it would be suspicious, but given the circumstances there is no explanation,” Dr Yakubu Dominic said.
Absolutely. You have only to look at the accompanying illustration to see that. There are some random bumps in the meat; that defies scientific explanation all right. I’m thinking of converting. The apostasy thing is a bit of a discourager though; I do like being allowed to change my mind about things.
(It’s thoughtful of the BBC to provide a list of other inexplicable signings and sightings. Message from Allah in tomato; thief steals Nun Bun; miracle chapati. Hours of fun for the whole family.)
Well. This is very instructive. The BBC left out a whole raft of sightings of the Virgin of Guadalupe in tortillas (corn not flour) and other unlikely spots in the U.S. southwest and in Mexico. But no one interprets these configurations to carry such general non-specific messages about what is good for all mankind. Usually the message is useful and straightforward “Pray and your husband will stop drinking.”
Nevertheless, these events lead me to suspect that imaginary One Upstairs is an imaginary obsessive micro-manager. It’s just not efficient to hide important messages in chunks of gristle. And what a waste of Super Powers. . . Where do these deities get their management training, I wonder?
Considering that allah is just Arabic for god, how is this supposed to prove that Islam is “the only true religion?”
Don’t they think that if god wanted to tell them Islam is the only true religion, he’d have made a piece of meat that said something along the lines of “Islam is the only true religion”?
And since Kabiru Haliru think that Islam is the only true religion “for mankind” does this mean that other religions may be true for other species? Is this a radical new form of relativism? Just wait till pomo animal right activists hear about this.
There’s an interesting article on Rorschach Icons in the Sceptical Inquirer here: http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-11/i-files.html
Strange, you’d think that Hamlet’s teasing of poor old Polonius would have done it for images in clouds, buns, pieces of meat, etc., long ago. Beats me, how they keep doing it, as though seeing patterns really must point to something transcendent. Madness. But why did the BBC pick it up?
Why did Allah send his message to a restaurant in northern Nigeria, where presumably most people already think Islam is the only true religion? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to go for a McDonalds in New York or a pizza place in Rome? Allah doesn’t seem to have thought this through at all.
Well Bob-B, these things are culture specific, as I’m sure you know. We see what we expect to see. What I don’t understand is why religious people find this kind of ‘seeing’ significant.
Besides, if you saw something significant in the gristle of a Big Mac, it’s the gristle that would hit the headlines!
Holy Cow! What a load of Bull!
Yep, Allah, really should have imprinted his gristly message in some fast food ‘joint in either, America, Brazil, Japan or China as they, apparently, are the world’s four largest consumers of beef.
I keep thinking, from whence the Sacred Cow derived?
Do restaurants in Nigeria have to know the farms from where they came?
As I am sure if that were the case there could be a lucrative pilgrimage market out there for the farmers.
“Where’s the beef”?
What I find so hilarious here is that the BBC’s culture of even-handed, non-judgmental reporting causes its reporters to adopt a tone totally at odds with the incredulity of most of their readers.
Quite simply, treating such an amusing story and its ludicrous quotes with such an air of feigned seriousness just causes the article to read like an Onion-style parody.
Thank goodness he didn’t chew on it or he might have wound up charged with apostasy.
OB: Imagine the horror if some apostate or kafir in Birnin Kebbi spotted the name and just went ‘Ha, Allah’s name, yum yum,’ and gobbled it down with some horseradish.
Homer Simpson beat you to it:
“Mmmm… Sacrilicious…”