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New Zealand Muslim Family Seeks Mecca Trip After Bacon
Meal
HASTINGS, NEW ZEALAND, July 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies)
- A Muslim family in Hastings, New Zealand, is demanding that the Pizza Haven company pay for them to go to Mecca for pilgrimage after they found out that the vegetarian pizza they ordered contained bacon, newspapers reported on Tuesday.
Mohammed Sameem, a Muslim dairy owner, said that his mother discovered that the pizza contained bacon after five members of his family had already eaten half of it.
"My mother found something in her mouth and we had to vomit, " he told The New Zealand Stuff News. "We are supposed to stay 40 yards away from pig[s] and bacon, " he added.
Sameem said that his wife, mother, stepfather and stepsister would have to travel to Mecca to seek repentance for their inadvertent sin. Muslims, like Jews, are religiously forbidden from eating any products derived from pigs.
"We've broken one of the big ones. We are not purified now," he told the newspaper.
He is demanding that Pizza Haven pay for his family's pilgrimage, which would cost about NZ$3000 per person.
On Monday, Pizza Haven's national operations manager, Colin Mellar, apologized to Sameem and offered him free pizza but the devout Muslim refused it and has now hired a lawyer.
Sameem insists that the company pays for his family trip to Mecca next April.
"That is the only place that we can go to ask forgiveness. I have committed a big sin.... I would rather die than eat a pig, " he said while speaking to The New Zealand Herald.
He also added that he is unable to go to the Masjid (mosque) for the next forty days - until the bacon had left his body.
Muslim spokesmen of the small New Zealand Muslim community gave divided opinions regarding Sameem's insistence on the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Mohammed Faruk Usman Ali Khan, president of the South Auckland Muslim Association, said that the eating of bacon by a Muslim is an extremely serious matter.
But, Shafiq Khan, secretary-general of the Federation of Islamic Association of New Zealand, said he thought that prayer would be sufficient to counteract the sin.
There are nearly 17,000 Muslims in New Zealand, comprising less than one percent of the total population. Governmental census figures show that the Muslim population has doubled every five years for the past 25 years.
New Zealand also has a large export oriented dairy and Halal meat industry whose products are found in all gulf countries and other Middle Eastern countries.
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