Trouble on menu

OPINION: French politicians are squealing over a chain-restaurant's decision to remove pork from its menu in parts of France – a move designed to attract Muslim customers, writes Cherie Sivignon in this week's L'expat.

Quick, a chain of franchise burger restaurants, sparked the furore when it took pork from its list of offerings in the cities of Roubaix and Marseilles, along with the Parisian suburb of Argenteuil.

Muslims are forbidden from eating pork products.

The country's leaders from across the political spectrum have complained that the switch to non-bacon burgers is depriving non-Muslims of their right to the standard menu.

Town leaders in Roubaix this month filed a complaint for discrimination.

"I'm not bothered by the fact that there is a halal menu but this is going too far because it is the only menu on offer and it has become discrimination," Roubaix Mayor Rene Vandierendonck said. Far-right politician Marine Le Pen said the switch was unacceptable and denounced it as a form of Islamisation. One customer was quoted as saying that the change from the bacon double cheeseburger to the halal version with smoked turkey was "just not the same".

Home to Europe's largest Muslim minority, estimated to be about 6 million, France has faced a series of controversies that has highlighted its unease with Islam in a secular society.

The government is drafting legislation to ban the wearing of the full Islamic veil in schools, hospitals, government buildings and on public transport.

Then, just last week Immigration Minister Eric Besson said he had signed a decree rejecting the application for French citizenship from a foreign national who had ordered his wife to wear a top-to-toe veil.

"It emerged this person forced his wife to wear the full veil, deprived her of freedom of movement with her face exposed, and rejected the principles of secularism and equality between men and women," Mr Besson said.

The controversy over the Quick menu alteration reminded me of the hubbub in Invercargill last year when sisters Natalie Bennie and Tamara Shefa were booted out of the Mevlana Cafe in Esk St by owner Mustafa Tekinkaya after he discovered they were from Israel.

It's the same breach of the Human Rights Act, I believe.

The cafe and restaurant owners in Invercargill and France have discriminated in the provision of their goods based on people's origins.

It's all a bit ugly.

Why couldn't the French restaurants offer the halal menu as well as the original menu. and reassure their Muslim customers that the halal food was prepared correctly and away from any pork.

There must be a way to work with people's religious or cultural differences and avoid the types of battles that prompt such dangerously strong reactions.

Personally, I won't be eating at any Quick restaurant whether it offers a halal menu or not. Why would anyone eat at a fast-food burger restaurant in this land of gastronomic treats when one can eat an excellent plat du jour for the same price elsewhere?

» Cherie Sivignon is a former Southland Times journalist who has moved to France with her French-born husband and their family.

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