Halal Food

London has many halal shops here and there, serving non-vegetarian food according to the Islamic specifications. When we go to eat somewhere, we trust those who cook, we kind of engage in a psychological contract with them believing that they have cooked the apparently great looking food (just served fresh on the table) with utmost cleanliness and maintaining hygiene etc. We actually never bother to throw a glance in their kitchen to see how clean the utensils are, how clean the nails of the cook are and especially, when we eat in a halal shop, we really don't bother to check if the butcher has slaughtered the chicken or the cow or the lamb by saying 'Allahu Akbar' and facing its face towards Mecca, we simply trust that YES, the rules have been followed. However, I wonder if there is any justification of trusting the 'halal' businessmen just because they put up in Arabic in front of their shops that they serve 'halal' food and so I, as a Muslim, should eat there and not anywhere else where the animal is slaughtered by sinful, misguided Christians, or Hindus, or Jews or Buddhists! I do not eat pork, more because its not largely available or popular in a country where I was brought up in, its not because of any religious compulsion. In the same view, I also do not eat camel, deer, birds (except chicken) etc. which are perfectly acceptable food in the eyes of Islam. In the same tune, I would prefer not to eat dogs, cats, snakes, monkey brains, octopus soup etc. just because I don't feel like eating them, not because Islam prohibits them as 'haraam'. I went to one Turkish shop that day to get some burger, the semi-drunk 'Turkish Muslim Brother' asked me my origin. Finding out that I am also a Muslim, the man, under the influence of alcohol..which is 'haraam' in Islam, told me with pride that he would serve me 'halal' food, as sometimes he deliberately disguises pork meat as beef and vice versa, when there is shortage of a particular type of meat. I found it so hypocritical...which made me write this blog today...it also made me think about the integration issue of Muslims here...will write about it some time later.