Nevermind Alcohol, Is Living In Canada Haram?

Over at The Varsity, the student paper for the University of Toronto, we get a couple updates regarding the halal controversy at the UT Scarborough campus, a topic the paper originally covered a few weeks ago. President Wulkan is censured by the student union (whatever that amounts to), and the paper mentions that they plan on continuing to cover issues of religious accommodation, though they lack an "m" with their "accomodation" (I don't know if that is a Freudian slip where the "m" may stand for something, or if it's just Canadian schooling). Anyway...

As the original article outlines, a school cafeteria, Bluff's, started to offer halal foods. Ahmad Jaballah, an MSA executive, criticised the move, saying, “This initiative was brought forth solely by Bluff’s without ever consulting the MSA or Muslim students. If this was a deliberate accommodation, it’s kind of offensive in giving us the food in a manner unsuitable to us" and he also "argued that patronizing such an establishment is wrong because Muslim students would provide revenue for Bluff’s to purchase alcohol—an action forbidden by hadith, a Prophetic saying." So, according to the MSA, not only must halal food be offered in order to be religiously accommodating, but so must the haram substance of alcohol be removed. Beer being "Canada's drink," this didn't go over so well with many.

At the bottom of this article, a discussion (of varied quality, including some nasty remarks) among posters ensues. In it, though, a few posters discuss how MSA actually comes to the conclusion that alcohol is haram and that, further, they're not even allowed to buy halal products from a store that sells it. The best evidence offered is an hadith Al-Tirmidhi Hadith 2776 Narrated by Anas ibn Malik, which is probably the hadith Mr. Jaballah was referring to, which says:

The Prophet invoked the curse of Allah on ten people in connection with wine: 1. the wine presser; 2. the one who has it pressed; 3. the one who drinks it; 4. the one who conveys it; 5. the one to whom it is conveyed; 6. the one who serves it; 7. the one who sells it; 8. the one who benefits from the price paid for it; 9 the one who buys it; and 10) the one for whom it is bought.

From this, the one poster picks out number 8, saying that everyone in Canada benefits from the price paid for alcohol, because of taxes which pay for public services. If this hadith forbids Muslims from patronising Bluff's, it surely forbids them from what everyone Canadian does: using roads, sidewalks and water.

But that the MSA can't justify their actions textually doesn't really matter as to if they should be accommodated or not. This is the bizarre but natural result that the current ideas on religious accommodation, a subset of multiculturalism, in Canada bring, as represented in University policies.

There is rarely ever a method to determine what counts as a genuine religious requirement for any religion, especially for a religion like Islam that lacks strong authorities, and this is realised by crafters of policies. They eventually come to say that anything can be a religious requirement as long as it is sincerely believed in by a person. Rather than setting up a set of actual rules and regulations, which students can consider when deciding if they either want to follow them and face no consequences, or not follow them and face the consequences, students are allowed to mend the rules to their own personal beliefs -- not having to write scheduled tests when they'd rather be praying for example. What would prevent a student from "sincerely believing" that God wants them to have an extra day to write an exam? Apparently nothing; and, indeed, students are given extra days to study as the result of religious accommodation all the time. Why even have an exam schedule? Just let students write them whenever they believe they're [divinely] ready.

So, back to the titular question, is living in Canada haram? According to multiculturalism, yes...if you sincerely believe it.