No crisis in the yoghurt culture Nick Hutchinson with halal yoghurt. A FEW weeks ago the biggest story in the ongoing stink between Islam and Christendom involved yoghurt. A boutique Australian dairy business had fallen foul of a bunch of folks who regarded this company's decision to obtain a halal certification so they could export to the Middle East as one of the greatest moral capitulation's the civilised world had seen. It struck me as a classic example of one of the key problems in this so-called age of terror, in that we need to become much more discerning in how we pick our fights. There are a whole bunch of things in the world right now which really matter, and others which don't matter at all. Solid terror laws matter. Tighter surveillance and diversionary programs for vulnerable teenagers matter. Halal yoghurt doesn't matter. Nor does the prospect of a couple of devout Islamic women wearing burqas in the public gallery at the nation's Parliament, provided of course that they have acceded to the requisite bodychecks the same way everyone else does before they safely enter the building. The halal business really puzzled me. To some extent in Australia, and absolutely everywhere in the United States, it passes without comment that foods are also labelled kosher, that is, fit for consumption by Jews, or parve, another Hebrew term describing food without meat or dairy. Yet when a label is applied to foods so they can be happily consumed by the most laid-back Islamic person, all hell breaks loose, with the rattier among us suggesting that next time we're in the dairy section we might as well send our money straight to al Qaeda. I interviewed Nick Hutchinson a few weeks ago, the sales and marketing manager for the Fleurieu Milk Company. A more reasonable young bloke you could not find. Nick was bewildered that his family-run company was under attack for obtaining a halal certification to sell yoghurt to the United Arab Emirates. Halal is a controversial practice in the context of the beef industry and other livestock such as goats as it requires that the animal have its throat cut. In the context of dairy produce, such as the gelatine-free yoghurt made by the Fleurieu Milk Company, this product was already halal anyway, in the same way an apple from a tree is halal. And it's here where these opponents of the halal certification are sadly deluded. They claim halal certification has the effect of being a tax on all consumers. Greater nonsense you have never heard. It cost this company (and no one else) just $1000 to obtain the certification, easily offset by the $50,000 value of the contract with the UAE. If the people who attacked them on social media regard themselves as patriots for their actions, they should realise all they did was harm a small Aussie firm which makes a world-class product, provides competition for the majors and employs locals by seeking out export opportunities. As such the deal doesn't constitute a threat to our way of life. It is our way of life, capitalism at its best, creating jobs for a small regional community, injecting money back into the economy. Fast forward a few weeks and something of a very different kind was unfolding in Sydney's Parramatta District Court. Unlike the halal non-issue, the events in this courtroom confirmed the existence of a mindset in our community which is anathema to Australian values, and an offence to the primacy of our secular legal system. On Thursday, two Muslim blokes refused to stand for the District Court judge, one of them claiming through his lawyer that they are not "at the behest of any authority other than Islam." NSW law requires all accused people to stand to hear the charge against them and respond with a plea of guilty or not guilty. Wassim Fayad and his co-accused Milad Bin Ahmad-Shah Al-Ahmadzai were having none of that. They defied the law and remained seated during their arraignments on an aggravated break and enter charge. Fayad initially refused to stand for Judge Andrew Colefax in the morning but stood later to plead not guilty to one charge of aggravated break and enter and attempting to pervert the course of justice. Al-Ahmadzai refused to stand three times during his proceedings, and his conduct has now been referred to NSW Attorney-General Brad Hazzard. In a pathetic display, Al-Ahmadzai initially tried to write off his failure to stand not as a demonstration of his faith but an apparently crippling injury he had sustained. When asked to stand a second time, he told Judge Colefax "no thank you"," with his buddy Fayad saying from the dock that his mate "has a bit of a sore leg"." Judge Colefax considered contempt charges against both men, despite their lawyers claims they had theological objections to standing. To his credit, Prosecutor Craig Everson said the conduct was like "putting a finger up to the court"." Indeed it was, and also to the rest of us.