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My grandma used to work at a Catholic charity to distribute food for people without resources.
There were a few Muslims who requested food from there, and they always complained that the meat wasn't halal. Their very Catholic response was that they treated everyone the same, and weren't going to change the food they offered just because some Muslims were complaining.
Then again, quite very Catholicly, they didn't offer any meat during Lent to anyone.
If you are getting help from someone you shouldn't complain about their preferences.
In my country they don't pay property taxes, and often use charity as a justification. So it's debatable if their help with strings attached is a net positive.
Give me your wallet and I'll buy you an acceptable dinner with it.
I just treat that shit like an allergy.
I don't get your point. They give food away for free and they choose what and when. What's wrong with that, exactly? That their choices correlate with their religion? Well, duh.
The story is illustrative of the failure of private charities as public institutions.
We've got two sets of dietary restrictions, one of which the Catholics disregard and the other they faithfully apply. This makes their charity functionally inaccessible to the chunk of their neighborhood that's Muslim.
This recalls another common instance in church charities, wherein recipients are pressured into prayer before receiving aid. As many of these charities - particularly in the wake of the Bush 43 era "Faith Based Initiatives" charity privatization initiative - obtain their aid from the federal government, what you have is secular aid filtered through sectarian institutions as a means of cultivating particular ideological views.
What’s wrong with that, exactly?
Set aside the generic legalist "Seperation of Church and State" 1st amendment guidelines, wherein residents aren't obligated to hold religious views in order to access government services.
The fundamental problem with a state sponsored religious charity is that it polarizes the community into economic haves and have-nots, based on religious beliefs. And that foments discord, bigotry, and ultimately violence.
For the record, the charity I was talking about does also receive funding from the government, due to the religious institutions pressure through their media and their own preachers, so these criticisms are also appropriate for that situation.
so they use public fund?
Yes.
This reminds me of the term "rice christians." When Christian missionaries would go abroad and offer aid to people only if they converted.
They're imposing their customs based on dogma on vulnerable people with little to no capacity to choose, with no larger basis than "it's what I was indoctrinated to believe". It's doubly shameful because this is a country that has been trying to unshackle itself from the legacy of a Fascist Catholic dictatorship, the Inquisition, and the forced expulsion/conversion of Jews and Muslims.
Halal/kosher is basically a "farm to table" supply chain requirement. Especially if you're relying on donations it wouldn't be simple to source. I wouldn't expect any charity really to refuse supplies or try to source a 'duplicate' set of supplies for a minority of the people they serve. If they were in a Muslim majority area it would make sense to go to the effort.
The donations they took was money. They bought the food directly from the supermarket, which does have halal items here.
Ah.
Yeah that's kind of a dick move.
Like I get not providing food you disapprove of. Food Not Bombs is supposed to be vegan food, but also when helping people, make reasonable accommodations to ensure you’re meeting needs they have. Haram meat given to a Muslim is useless, you’re better off giving that meat to someone else. No matter how many cheeseburgers you give a vegan, you won’t fill their stomach.
In fact this is one of the issues with charity as a concept. Many who do it expect gratitude for whatever they give and see requests for something that would help better or to stop giving things that will only go to waste as being a choosy beggar. When aiding people you need to ask them what they need, otherwise any help you provide is accidental.