The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
World’s Loneliest Pig
The swine flu frenzy has reached Afghanistan, Reuters reports:
Afghanistan’s only known pig has been locked in a room, away from visitors to Kabul zoo where it normally grazes beside deer and goats, because people are worried it could infect them with the virus popularly known as swine flu.
The pig is a curiosity in Muslim Afghanistan, where pork and pig products are illegal because they are considered irreligious, and has been in quarantine since Sunday after visitors expressed alarm it could spread the new flu strain.
“For now the pig is under quarantine, we built it a room because of swine influenza,” Aziz Gul Saqib, director of Kabul Zoo, told Reuters. “We’ve done this because people are worried about getting the flu.”
This even though “there are no pig farms in Afghanistan and no direct civilian flights between Kabul and Mexico.”
Worse than the hysteria is the evident hypocrisy. If Afghanistan is filled with devout Muslims who would never touch pork, who exactly ate every pig in the country but one?
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