A recent scandal in which a Taiwanese employer forced Muslim workers to eat pork exposed a lack of knowledge of Islam in Taiwan and could harm Taiwan’s international image, representatives from Oman and Jordan said in Taipei yesterday, calling for respect for Islam in the country.
While most of them accepted that it was an individual case, the diplomats urged the government to take notice of the severity of the incident.
Director of the Jordanian Commercial Office Abed Alnaser Alhyari said: “It is not right to force people to eat things against their religion.”
“Taiwan is a democratic country and has freedom of religion. [A total of] 350,000 [foreign] workers should also be treated as nicely as Taiwanese,” he said on the sidelines of an event yesterday featuring Middle Eastern culture.
The event was co-hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, representative offices of Oman, Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and other civil groups.
Having lived in Taiwan for more than a year, Alhyari said he doesn’t believe there were many cases like the pork incident in Taiwan because “Taiwanese people are so friendly and so nice to live with and have hospitality.”
It’s important to “make sure employers be aware of the seriousness of such a thing,” he added.
Sulaiman al-Mughairy, director of Oman’s representative office in Taiwan, and who has lived in Taiwan for more than 11 years, said Taiwanese people lack understanding of the Middle East and its culture, citing cases he heard of some Muslim women not being allowed to wear abaya when praying because “they are white in color which is considered a bad color for you in Taiwan.”
Saying that such treatment of Muslim people in Taiwan was “inhumane,” al-Mughairy added that foreign workers experiencing such situations often choose to “bear the suffering.”
“When they complain, they will end up being terminated. [Foreign workers] pay a lot of money in their countries for brokers. They end up losing a lot instead of gaining when making complaints. Most of the time, when they suffer, they just bear the suffering,” he said. “[The government] should enforce companies not to terminate contracts of these laborers if they make complaints.”
Taiwan has good reason to know more about the Middle East, as there are 60,000 Muslims in Taiwan and bilateral trade between Taiwan and the Middle East in the first half of last year reached US$27.1 billion, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Javier Hou (侯清山) said, adding that 83 percent of Taiwan’s oil imports come from the region.
Hou said that Taiwan’s understanding of the Middle East is limited, which is why the cultural exhibition will also be held in Changhua City on May 29 and May 30, and in Pingtung City on June 5 and June 6.
In related news, Hou yesterday denied media reports that said the government has rejected an application by Iran earlier this year to set up a trade office in Taipei.
A business association in Tehran expressed its wish to set up a trade office in Taiwan and its Taiwanese counterpart, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council, is still in the process of deliberating the case in conjunction with MOFA, Hou said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
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