Halal

The most extreme story about Moslems and Foods that I keep on hearing since my childhood is about how picky they are. One story that I keep on hearing is that the story about a man got invited by a non-muslims and he refused to eat because the cooking utensils was used to cook pork before.

Some of you must have seen the label, it usually written in Arabic word and it sometimes appear in the packaging of some food that you bought. Maybe some of you wonder what is that, or maybe not. But for those of you who are wondering what that means, keep on reading.

I usually lived in Indonesia where the vast majority of the people is Moslem, so the law of majority is applied here. The biggest market in Indonesia is Moslem people, so if you want to sell food, it has to be something that appeal to them and nothing will appeal more other than the halal label. But, since I was living in the Moslem majority country, I never deeply think about the halal thing, because I just assume that everyone knows about it and will try to comply to the majority understanding that if you sell something, it has to be halal.

But, here in Singapore where Moslem is not a majority, suddenly I think about this issue of halal deeply.

No, halal does not mean just "No Pork and No Lard." It goes beyond that.

Let me share you my understanding about "halal"

I always believe that there are two types of "Haram" or "Forbidden" (or something like that). Haram is the opposite of halal, so everything that is not haram, is halal.

Food in general is halal except for Pig and Dog, the rest is halal. I called it SUBSTANTIALLY forbidden, it is forbid because God forbid it, end of the case.

But then, let ask this question. "Area all chicken halal?"

The short answer is no.
The long answer is there is such a thing I called, METHODOLOGICALLY forbidden. in Islam, there is a certain way to kill an animal. You have to say, "Bismillahirrahmanirrahiim" which means, "In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful". So if a chicken killed without saying that, it becomes not halal. It is not halal not because of the substance, but due to wrong method is in place.

Since now I'm a Public Policy student, I'll use corruption as example. In Islam, it's not only 'how you spend your money' that matter, 'where do you got the money' also matter, so it's the issue of input and output. Corruption is forbidden, stealing is forbidden and when the input is from a bad source, then the output can be bad as well. Chicken can be not halal if it's bought with corruption money.  

Now I'm in Singapore, where Islam is not a majority and at some point in time, what I did is to comply as good as I can to both of the reason why things can be not halal. But I might not always be able to comply with the "Methodologically forbidden" rule, because you'll never know when and where you are hungry. At least, I will not violate the "Substantially forbidden" rule without a super duper strong reason.

The database in my brain reminds me of a story of a person who got stranded in the forest without things to eat and yet he allowed to eat pork because of the necessity at the time and when the choice is death or eat, well... this is where the power of reasoning comes in Islam.

I just keep one thing in mind, "God is the most gracious and most merciful".

But if you find it hard, Seafood is all halal even the carcass one.
except if you stole it or use 'bad' money to bought it, and/or cooked it with pork stock, hahaha...