Muslim Deli Owners Must Choose Koran or Customers
Most of Khairul Kabir’s customers at the Madison Deli and Grocery in East Harlem do not realize that his jovial smile masks a lingering sense of shame.
Mr. Kabir, 49, an immigrant from Bangladesh and a Muslim, is chagrined because he sells pork and alcohol, which are prohibited by the Koran. He also sells lottery tickets, a form of gambling that is also banned. Devout Muslims are not supposed to indulge in, sell, or even handle any of these “haram,” or forbidden, goods. Mr. Kabir’s dilemma is widespread among Muslim immigrants in New York and other American cities, where religious beliefs, the pursuit of prosperity and pressures to assimilate are often in conflict.
But the spiritual struggle is especially acute in diverse neighborhoods like East Harlem, where Muslim businesses must compete for customers who expect that a deli will, for example, make them a ham sandwich or sell them a Lotto ticket or a six pack of beer.
Opinions regarding the sale of haram items are as diverse as the people who form the Muslim community in America, but Mr. Kabir is unequivocal about his distaste for the practice.
“Selling haram is the same as eating haram,” he said, glancing at the beer-filled coolers that line the grocery’s back wall. “I feel guilty, totally guilty. I want to sell the business and go home and not sell haram. Every day I’m thinking I should do that.”
Mr. Kabir said he had to sell goods he disapproved of to survive the recession. “I am doing a lot of bad things,” Mr. Kabir said. “I pray to Allah to forgive me.”
Mohammed al Naqib, who was working at Sammy’s Grocery at 165 DeKalb Avenue in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, said the store, which is owned by his cousin, stopped selling beer four or five years ago, because of lack of demand and “because of religion, mostly.”
“The area has changed,” Mr. al Naqib said. “My cousin, he was selling. But I return the license from the government. It doesn’t sell good.”
Back in East Harlem, Ahmed Ibrahim, a 25-year-old from Egypt who works in the tiny 3-S Deli at Second Avenue and East 105th Street, was concerned because the store could not sell beer — not because of religious law but because the previous owner had lost his liquor license.
From a business perspective, Mr. Ibrahim said, stores had to sell beer and other haram to be successful.
“For me, I come over here to make money and stuff,” he said. “If I come over here and try to run a halal business, only Muslims will go there. You have to sell to Americans.”
“Beer and cigarettes and deli sandwiches are the most important things in the deli-grocery business," Mr. Ibrahim said.
As Mr. Ibrahim spoke a radio played what he said was an Islamic prayer. When a group of customers entered the store, Mr. Ibrahim changed the station.
“If I see a problem with a customer, I change it,” Mr. Ibrahim said, gesturing to the radio. “To do business, I have to make the customer smile.”
A worker at a grocery on Carlton Avenue in Fort Greene said the store hired the equivalent of a “Shabbos goy,” a gentile engaged by Orthodox Jews to manipulate electrical devices on the Sabbath.
“We have somebody who handles the beer who is not Muslim,” the worker said.
Some imams say they understand the pressures faced by Muslims trying to make a living in such a competitive city.
Mr. Kabir’s imam, Mohammad Fayek Uddin, leader of the Jackson Heights Islamic Center and Mosque on Roosevelt Avenue, Queens, spoke to a reporter shortly after conducting an evening prayer service.
Mr. Uddin, 42, said that while he might chide someone he knew personally for selling haram, he was not required to get involved.
“In this country everyone has to do something. I deliver my speech in front of the people, it depends on their choice,” Mr. Uddin said as worshipers who remained after the prayer nodded in agreement. “No punishment, not here,” said Mr. Uddin, who also came from Bangladesh. “Allah will give punishment on the day of judgment; I do not have an authority to do that."
Mr. Uddin added that he had occasionally helped observant Muslims find more acceptable work. He said believers could usually find jobs that did not conflict with their faith because “Allah will provide for the people.”
Despite the temptations America presents, Mr. Uddin said he believed that life was better here.
“In this country I saw the infinite independence," he said. “That’s better than in our country.”
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