The great halal and Islamic hoax

Many years ago, while checking in for a long-haul flight, the kind I cannot afford these days, I requested the “halal” option for on-flight meals.

Several hours into the flight and just before mealtime, the flight attendant stuck a halal sticker on my seat, and I was happy that they had remembered not to serve me any pork bacon for breakfast.

Minutes later, I was served some rice and mutton, while the rest of the white infidels around me were happily enjoying a real breakfast, which included omelette, bread and toast.

It then dawned on me that the airlines may be ignorant about Muslim dietary requirements. They might have thought that halal meant that some animal has to be slaughtered in Allah’s name.

The anecdote is real, and took place long before the business world talked about the halal industry. Things might have changed, and the same airline might now have “halal” bread and toast for their Muslim passengers.

 After this incident, I began to foster a cynicism about anything being labelled or paraded as halal.

But the airline was not the only one ignorant about the concept of halal. Muslims, too, are to blame for reinforcing so many myths surrounding the halal label, so much so that industries make sure that some of their products and services are at least baptised as halal to assure cash-rich Muslims that they, too, have a place in heaven despite their excesses.

This halal industry was born only several years after the introduction of Islamic banking and Islamic finance, thinking that these are the main thrust of Muslim economic life.

It is as if the whole stress of economy in the Islamic corpus is on how to manage one’s wealth, not about how to distribute wealth equitably.

Understandably, this huge potential of Islamic capitalism was soon milked by its atheist cousins in the East and West. And so we see a mushrooming of Islamic banks and other fancy financial solutions bearing the Islamic label.

Much of it has little to do with Islam, some bordering on idiocy. How else would one explain a feature of a particular Islamic loan package offered by a pioneer Islamic bank in the country, where the loan amount is first converted to Saudi riyal! Presumably this can cleanse the money of evil gains! Such is the silliness of the "Islamic" banking we claim to be proud of pioneering.

The halal label has another use: it is now a weapon to scare the ignorant Muslim masses, who strive to be good Muslims, and who because of their lack of reading on the subject, have no choice but depend on the official keepers of the faith.

Nowhere is this pathetic state of affairs more pronounced than during the recent Umno general assembly, when Islam itself is subjected to a skewed dichotomy of halal and non-halal.

It is no longer a question of sectarianism, for the bulk of sectarianism is based on hatred and a need for power. The one here is based purely on ignorance – a religious version of the party’s famed racial bigotry.

Any Muslim scholar worth his or her salt can only be embarrassed by the parade of ignorance displayed in the past few days, and which this article has neither the patience nor the space to explain.

I have grown to be wary of the halal and Islamic labels, as much as I shudder at the thought of spending a few minutes in a toilet of a multi-million ringgit mosque.  These labels have become an embarrassment to well-meaning Muslims.

In fact, consumer goods bearing the name “Islamic” have their own reputation, whether an Islamic university, Islamic hospital or Islamic hotel. They are just like those brands named after the French proposition “de”, which is used in many local products and services. This foreign word, when used in Malaysia, usually serves as a warning of bad maintenance, third-rate quality and cheap imitations ahead.

Another case in point is the recent mushrooming of Islamic preschools in middle-class neighbourhoods, enticing urban Malay parents with English-medium education for their children, yet claiming to be true to Islamic teachings, as if the existing conventional system has altered the Muslim demography.

But at year-end, what the child learns may be a fraction of what an ordinary kindergartener has learnt, including reading and writing. Apart, of course, from some invocations before and after mealtimes. But that famous Quranic opener to “read” is lost in the whole process.

Ultimately, and ironically, a Muslim may find opting for services outside the halal label the more viable alternative. There will come a time when such labels will have to be read through Orwellian lenses, that halal may mean exactly the opposite.

In my case, I learnt this through a meal of rice and mutton served thousands of metres above land. – December 11, 2013.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.