A correspondent and Shot In The Dark reader writes from Kabul, Afghanistan with comments on my post on the pork-averse WalMart checkout girl (link fixed – thanks, Flash):

I’m an aid worker in Kabul, where I’ve been based for the past [nunber of] years. I’m writing to comment on your post about the Muslim woman who didn’t want to touch the pork at the supermarket. I thought that you might be interested to know that here in Afghanistan, one of the most fundamentalist of all Islamic countries, you can quite easily buy pork products in what is affectionately known by the locals as the “Bush Bazaar”, where all sorts of imported goods (often obtained through mysterious means from the US base at Bagram) are available. The Afghan shopkeepers have no qualms about keeping it in their shops or handing it to you if you wish to purchase it. If you’re happy to buy it they’re happy to sell it. I’ve seen both pork and alchohol openly for sale in a number of countries in the part of the world. Based on my fairly extensive experience in the Muslim world the controversy in MN seems to be to be entirely contrived.

That, of course, is the part that puzzles me, and bumfuzzles some friends of mine who either are, or are familiar with, moderate Islam; the puritanism about pork, alcohol and seeing-eye dogs is the result of decrees from a small number of fundie Somali imams in the Twin Cities.

Thanks for running Shot in the Dark; I enjoy it very much. I’m from [someplace in the upper midwest] so it is a pleasure to be able to read about life at home, even if the [liberals] irritate me even all the way out here.