Kosher-Halal Co-op has recently approached campus organizations for money that would fund efforts to better recruit Muslim students. “The Co-op is going to try to make an active effort to recruit more Muslim students,” Tavi Guren, Kosher-Halal Dining Loose Ends Coordinator, said.
“Right now there are very few Muslims in the Co-op. We want to make the perception of the Co-op more inclusive.”
The problem, as Guren sees it, is one of image rather than substance. “I think a lot of what is inhibiting Muslims from joining the Co-op is how the Co-op is perceived, rather than how it really is, and that’s partly because 90 percent of the people who come into the Co-op don’t know anything about the laws of Halal or Kashrut,” Guren said, referring to the Muslim and Jewish religious laws concerning the preparation and consumption of food.
“We have to ask guests not to touch anything,” he continued. “We have a policy of just not having [guests] do things in the kitchen on their own. Because if it’s not very well explained, they go to get a glass of milk on a night when we are serving meat, someone has to say ‘Hey! Don’t do that!’ But we do try to be as nice and inclusive as we can.” In fact, the Co-op has made an effort towards something of a media blitz. Last week the Co-op applied for $300 from the OSCA board of directors to finance ads in College newspapers that would emphasize the halal aspects of the Co-op. The proposal, however, was turned down.
Shahir Ahmed, a member of the OSCA board — and, he said, the only Muslim currently in Kosher-Halal Co-op — explained the decision.
“[The proposal] kind of came out of the blue,” he said. “We saw it as well intentioned, but none of this was really discussed with Muslim students in the Co-op or with the MSA [Muslim Students Association]. There were certain issues that the co-op needed to first talk over with the Muslim students before they can go and advertise and look to recruit Muslim students.” Newspaper ads, he said, didn’t seem like the right approach.
“It’s not as if, like, not all Muslim students know about the Co-op. The Co-op celebrates Muslim holidays too. But it has to be taken into account that maybe they’re really not that interested in being part of the Co-op. We thought there needed to be a dialogue between these groups, and then a proposal coming out of that dialogue,” Ahmed said. In the past, Guren said, the Co-op has had as many as six or seven Muslims in a given semester. Today, a little more than a third of Co-op members are non-Jewish, he added.
Discrepancies in dining preferences may be part of the issue, Ahmed said. “All the laws of Halal are encompassed in Kosher Co-op,” he explains, “But not all halal foods are kosher. So [Muslim students] don’t really have as many options. Some people have expressed that concern. But that’s not a complaint. You can’t really complain about religious laws.”
A similar sentiment was expressed in a letter to the Review this week from Lina Elbadawi, next year’s Chair of the Muslim Student’s Association. (See page 9)
“The difference is that what makes food halal for Muslims is the use of halal products; other than that there are no rules. It is difficult to follow the kosher rules,” Elbadawi said.
“My main suggestion would be to start a dialogue between MSA and the Co-op,” she concludes. “Through this dialogue many questions and misunderstandings could be cleared up.”
“It is a halal Co-op,” Guren said. “Even though there are very few Muslims right now. We’d like to have more Muslims involved in the Co-op. The way that it is now, and the way it will be, is a place for students who identify with being either Jewish or Muslim — to be with other people who identify with being the same way. It’s kind of nice to deal with people who have the same religious background as you.”