The holiday season is here, and so the mind turns to the question, is nutmeg halal?
Latest Updates: halal RSS
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aziz
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johnpi
Malaysia hopes to create world halal standard.
“Malaysia’s halal certification is recognized worldwide so perhaps we can play an important role in creating a global standard,” Malaysia’s religious affairs minister Jamil Khir Baharom said in an interview on Thursday. “We need a halal certification that everyone can use easily.”
The halal industry is based on a belief that Muslims should eat food and use goods such as cosmetics that are ‘halalan toyibban’, which means permissible and wholesome.
But Muslim jurists do not always agree on what is halal. Islam prohibits the consumption of pork and prescribes how animals must be slaughtered, but there has been debate on the acceptability of non-alcoholic beer, collagen and vinegar.
Rules are interpreted and enforced more strictly in some countries. Sudanese authorities have hauled up women for wearing trousers and a Malaysian woman has been sentenced to a beating for drinking beer, practices which are acceptable in some Muslim countries.
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mirelle
Eating halal meat may be more time-consuming and expensive, but given the state of the hamburger the average American usually buys today in the USA, it’s probably smarter.
The article starts off with the story of Stephanie Smith, a dance instructor who ate a grilled hamburger and was infected with a virulent strain of E.coli that put her in a coma for nine weeks. She’s still recovering. It goes on to say:
Ms. Smith’s reaction to the virulent strain of E. coli was extreme, but tracing the story of her burger, through interviews and government and corporate records obtained by The New York Times, shows why eating ground beef is still a gamble. Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe.
Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen.
The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.
Using a combination of sources — a practice followed by most large producers of fresh and packaged hamburger — allowed Cargill to spend about 25 percent less than it would have for cuts of whole meat.
Definitely worth reading, but not after dinner.
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thabet
Talking of markets, consumers, and religious rites and festivals:
According to a recent study by the Solis agency, which specializes in ‘ethnic marketing’, the halal market (in France) is valued at close to 4 billion euro for 2009, and is estimated to grow at annual rate of 15%. According to Solis, 93% of North Africans and 55% of sub-Saharan Africans buy halal products.
In Italy, a hotel now caters especially for guests who are fasting.
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thabet
Perhaps you’d like to end your roza with some halal wine?
Tabak’s quest for 0% alcohol wine begun at the request of Muslims. At Friday get-togethers, holidays such as Christmas or New Year’s, they couldn’t drink with colleagues and friends and a ‘halal wine’ could offer them a solution.
Tabak studied the process of making alcohol-free wine. Through a new technical process, for which a patent is pending, Tabak, in cooperation with a German company, managed to make alcohol-free wine. There are already so-called alcohol-free wines, Tabak says, but they didn’t pass the HQC halal-test since there’s a bit of alcohol in them.
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johnpi
Advocacy group says animals should be stunned before slitting their throats.
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thabet
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thabet
A Swedish city will no longer supply food to schools ‘based on ethical and religious grounds, such as halal meat’.
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zahed
Article featuring me and zabihah.com in Time Magazine (Halal: Buying Muslim) is out today in print and online. A sample:
“Ideology does not fit within a consumer mindset,” observes [Zahed] Amanullah of Zabihah.com. “At the end of the day, people will not buy halal simply because it’s halal. They’re going to buy quality food. Ideology doesn’t make a better-tasting burger, a better car, or a better computer.” But it sure makes a powerful marketing pitch.
This is in the international edition of Time, but possibly the US edition as well (someone over yonder will have to confirm).
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plimfix
Hounslow KFC goes halal, reports Asian Image. That’s in London, for folks not familiar with British geography. “I won’t be buying from them again,” declares John, in a comment on the Daily Mail website. Halal or no, I wouldn’t buy from KFC = Klearing Forest for Chickens. Or perhaps KFC are trying to klean up their act…
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aziz
more on the Dunkin Donuts versus halal story – as it happens, kosher-only stores are permitted by the parent company, it’s only the muslim store that was singled out.
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aziz
some things aren’t haram – but should be. my stomach still hurts thinking about it.
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aziz
This is the best sermon about why pork (and shellfish) are haram I have ever heard – by Joel Osteen, evangelical Christian pastor in Houston.
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shahed
Regarding this news item on a kosher social seal that certifies Kosher business as following ethical standards: this past weekend, several speakers at the 2008 International Halal Market Conference in Brunei (including myself) used the podium to call for expanding the definition of “halal” to incorporate themes of social responsibility and sustainability in much the same way. Wouldn’t you love to see restaurants on zabihah.com be identified as meeting ethical business and environmental standards as well as being halal certified? I know I would.
(While people seemed receptive to the idea, I didn’t notice the commitment needed to make it a reality.)
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aziz
are giant pandas halal? probably.
