A London school cafeteria has a halal-only menu, and many parents are displeased.
Kingsgate Primary in West Hampstead is among growing numbers of schools with high Muslim populations to use halal-only meat in cooking.
But the menus, which will feature only meat that has been slaughtered in the halal way with a single cut to the throat, have not always been well received.
At Kingsgate, parents carrying placards congregated at the school gates to demand a reversal of the policy, claiming their children would be denied a choice.
But the protests triggered claims of racism from parents of Muslim children, who make up three quarters of the school population.
Yesterday headmistress Liz Hayward was refusing to back down, insisting that a majority of parents had backed the move to halal-only menus in a comprehensive survey of families.
I admit I have a hard time working up any serious offense at this move, but I can understand some people resist being made foreigners in their own country, and having their children's diet dictated by the religious sensibilities of others. For the school, the problem is anyone can eat halal food, but Muslims may refuse non-halal products, so the easiest course is to go for the halal-only menu.
The accusations of racism are bogus, but predictable. Not that I doubt there exists racists among these English parents like anywhere else, but there are certainly less radical reasons for some concern. Somehow I don't think the Muslims would accept, say, kosher food being forced on their children.
We are going to see a lot of similar conflicts in the coming years all over Europe, and I don't doubt that extremists on both sides are the ones who will benefit politically.
5:22:15 PM 
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