Buyer Beware :-)

[Amatullah]

My daughter and family took me out for breakfast this morning for a belated birthday. Her friend and children came and we actually got my dad to come out and his caregiver. Six adults and 4 kids ages 3,2,1 and 6 months. It was a zoo, . My daughter had been telling me how good the chicken fried steak is there. I ordered it. The food came, big servings, steak, buried under country gravy with nice huge chunks of pork sausage in it. Oops. Everyone around had an opinion. Just this once won't hurt, scrape it off, etc. I explained to the waitress that I don't eat pork and just asked her to take it to the kitchen and scrape off the gravy. It wasn't their fault and I decided I would just take it and let my brother in law have it later. No fuss, no big deal. I don't believe scraping it off is sufficient, right? That's my real question/why I'm writing this somewhat inane piece. My plate came back from the kitchen with a new piece of steak and hash browns and no gravy, which was very nice of them.

My dad couldn't understand why I couldn't go ahead and eat it with the gravy. I told him I could, but I chose not to, since it's considered wrong for a Muslim to do. He pointed out that none of us is always going to do everything right and I agreed, but told him if I was ever going to deliberately do something wrong, it would be something I enjoyed more than a somewhat relatively disgusting piece of meat. If I had passed on the bacon and sausage because I didn't care for it, which I don't btw, there wouldn't have been any need for the big conversation.

[The seeker]

JAK Amatullah ,
may Allah(swt) anchor us to our faith .
Ya dear sister , you could have avoided such conversation if you just had allowed it , but you may had a longer one later , in the hereafter .
Well you did dear sister ,
such situations are how people know about islam , it begins with question , why you did that ? , but it can lead to big knowledge .
May Allah (swt) be with you .

[Truth Knight]

Generally speaking, scraping it off wouldn't make it right. The worms would have soaked into the because the gravy would have. So basically it's still dirty.

That said, I agree with my brother the Seeker. Avoiding such conversations isn't really a good thing, nor is having them a bad thing. In addition to being a good committed Muslim, you give the spectators of the situation a good idea about the Muslim and Islam in general by showing them that Muslims care that it would displease Allah (SWT), which is something no Muslim want -let alone can afford. That alone is reward-worthy from Allah (SWT).

Basically, you did the right thing .