Courtesy and halal, where are they?

Last week on Wednesday night, my mother and I went to Pasar Borong to do some grocery shopping. We went thee using my brother’s car. Unfortunately for us, after the shopping, my brother’s car broke down. There’s something wrong with the starter. But that is beside the point why I want to write it on my blog. The thing that I actually want to stress out in this post is ‘courtesy’. I noticed that many people nowadays is lacking in this criteria. We park our car near a restaurant where there are a lot of people. In other words there are crowd everywhere. Nevertheless, none of them offered help to either me or my mom. Even though the car hood was open, my mom looks panicked and I am trying so hard to start the car, no one would come and say “is there something wrong?” or “may I help you”. I wonder, what happen to ‘tolong –menolong amalan mulia’ catchphrase. I’m not here to whine but this is the reality. We always said that Malays are full with courtesy, ‘sopan-santun’, and many more goods traits but due time, it has been left behind. What a shame……

On Saturday, I went to JB to Chew’s house. We went to Jusco to buy sushi ingredient as I have constantly asked him to make some for me. He was checking up some vinegar made from Japan when he suddenly said that, “as far as I remember, this vinegar is not halal.” As the lebel was made in Japanese I couldn’t understand it but just nod along. However, stood beside Chew was a salesperson who is rearranging the sushi that has just been made. She clearly heard what Chew has been saying and yet she did not say anything whether the vinegar was halal or not. Mind you, she is a Malay who definitely be a Muslim. Due to the fact that I want to make sure whether the vinegar was halal or not I asked her. Then only she said that the vinegar was made from Japan and definitely not halal and she also suggest that we bought Malaysian made vinegar. I wonder, if I didn’t ask her and she did hear what Chew has said, would he stop us from buying the vinegar? Throughout the store, I can see that there’s a lot of product that has been sold without any halal logo paste on its label. Are we sure that what ever we put in our mouth is halal? When we get to a Japanese food section, there’s a lebel stated that ‘ Please Look At The Ingredient Before Purchasing’ however, what struck me is that all the ingredient is in Japanese. So what good are the disclaimers? Just to make sure that they escape liability if there’s someone sue them for eating non-halal food? My sister always buys chocolate called Rocky for his son. After I saw that Rocky was sold in Japanese section. I wonder again, have we feed a non-halal to Johan (my naphew)?

The next time you purchased something that did not have any halal logo, think again would it be halal or not?