My Favorite Muslim Grocery Store

I was shocked to read in Doug Grow’s column on February 19, 2006 that my favorite grocery store, Holy Land, was boycotting Danish products.

I started going to Holy Land several years ago to be with Muslims. We hear a lot about Muslims in the news and it is mostly bad. Since Christianity is misrepresented in the news, I assumed the same of Islam. So I go the Holy Land to be in a place where people can represent themselves.

And in the Holy Land that includes me being me. I go about bare-headed, wearing a leather jacket and blue jeans and am treated by staff with total respect. This is how I know this store: they tolerate difference. And so when I thought they were doing something that, in my opinion, is an act that separates people, I was so shocked I had to see it with my own eyes. Last Saturday I went to the Holy Land and there in the cooler, where it always is, was Danish butter. I looked for a sign advising me on how to think about this product, but I found nothing. So I looked for the owner, Majdi Wadi.

He was readily available. Yes, there had been a sign over the Danish butter, but the butter had never been removed, he explained. He had received calls from other Muslim businesses to participate in the boycott and so he had put up signs over the butter advocating the boycott. His intention was to let his customers decide to boycott it. He, himself, thinks it is wrong to insult any religion, but he also worries about the farmer who gets up at 5 a.m. to make the butter.

Such consideration is rare. It is not easy to consider all the players in any argument and farmers get the least consideration. Yes, there are farmers in Denmark who are going to be punished by this boycott and they have no relation to the cartoonist nor to the paper that published the cartoon. Majdi Wadi, a Muslim businessman, has thought about them.

We talked more, while customers bustled about us. He explained he’d decided eventually it was not right for him to tell his customers what to buy. He has Muslim customers and Christian customers, like me, he said, and he wants to serve all of us.

Most people think he had to choose between serving his customers or serving his religion. When I spoke with Mr. Wadi, I concluded he has made a different choice. He has chosen to serve both by practicing tolerance. He has made a difficult choice: tolerance is intrinsic to both Islam and Christianity, but many Muslims and Christians have not lived up to it. I am grateful to the Holy Land for choosing a difficult path, the path of tolerance, a path advocated by both Islam and Christianity. If outside pressures cause him to change his mind and remove the butter, I will continue to shop at Holy Land. As long as I am treated with respect there; they are entitled to their opinion.
2006