A study by Pew,“The Future of the Global Muslim Population” from earlier this year states that Muslims in the U.S. make up only 2.6 million or .08 percent of the overall population.
Of course, depending on where you live that number may be higher or lower. For example, the area of the U.S. that I live in, Muslims make up only .02 percent of the population. So why does my local Costco sell Halal meats and poultry?
When asked, the Costco Management said they are “selling to their base”. Really? When asked if the sales of their meats or poultry have gone up since they started carrying Halal foods, the answer was a simple “no, it’s about the same.” When asked, then why bother to sell it at all, the answer was “the decision was made at a corporate level.”
It would seem then to me, that they are not really selling to their base, but rather folding under pressure from Muslim organizations such as CAIR (the Council on American Islamic Relations) that often use their minority status to their benefit. If you don’t “cater” to the Muslims then you are labeled a racist, a bigot or Islamophobe and threatened with being ostracized by the mainstream media who will gladly portray you and your company as such and play it 24/7.
I say this for several reasons, but the most obvious would be the population of another minority, Jews in America. According to a 2010 report by the North American Jewish Data Bank, Jews in the U.S. numbered over 6.5 million or 2.1 percent of the overall population.
Getting back to where I live, the Jewish and Muslim population is very close in number. Yet, if I want to purchase Kosher food, I have to pre-order it from a Kosher Butcher once a month who then drives from a neighboring state hundreds of miles away and meets those buying his meats in the parking lot of a local synagogue.
But here is the real interesting part. Muslims are permitted to eat both Kosher as well as non-Kosher foods. That is not opinion, but rather written in the Quran in Surah 5:5,
This day are (all) things good and pure made lawful unto you. The food of the People of the Book is lawful unto you and yours is lawful unto them.
People of the book, yes that would be the food of both the Jews and Christians are allowed or ‘lawful’ for Muslims, yet it does not work the other way around (even though the Quran says it is so).
Some Imam’s and Muslims will tell you they are not allowed to eat non-Halal, my question in response, “what did Muslims eat prior to Halal food being available here in the U.S.?”
There used to be a Kosher butcher in my town, he served both Jews and Muslims until 9/11. After 9/11 the Imam at the local Mosque told his members to no longer support “Jewish owned stores” and the Kosher butcher went out of business shortly thereafter because without the local Muslim population as patrons, he no longer sold enough to remain open.
It’s humorous that according to the Quran, both Jews and Christians are allowed to eat their food, but according to the book that matters, that is totally false and forbidden. Anything connected to idolatry or idol worship is forbidden both in Biblical text and in rabbinic law as explained in Exodus 20:3-5
3. You shall not have the gods of others in My presence. 4. You shall not make for yourself a graven image or any likeness which is in the heavens above, which is on the earth below, or which is in the water beneath the earth. 5. You shall neither prostrate yourself before them nor worship them, for I, the Lord, your God, am a zealous God, Who visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons, upon the third and the fourth generation of those who hate Me
Kosher is far from Halal. Aside from both Jews and Muslims not eating pork there are many foods that Muslims can eat that Jews cannot. The overall preparation of Kosher is different than that of Halal, the mixing of meat and milk is totally forbidden by Kosher Jews, but not Halal. Muslims can eat shell fish, Kosher Jews cannot, I could go on and on, but the bottom line is they are far from even being close to the same.
When it comes to the slaughter of the animal, Halal is where both Jews and Christians should have issue. Again, according to the Halal Food Authority website in order for an animal to be slaughtered according to Halal, the butcher must be facing Mecca and recite the "shahada or tasmiya, Bismillah Allahu Akbar" while the animal is killed.
So what does this mean to Christians who make up approximately 84 percent of the population? For this question I consulted my friend Pastor Scott Stewart, MA. Pastor Stewart holds both a BA and a M.A. in Middle Eastern History and is currently completing his PhD.
According to Pastor Stewart,
As Gentiles were beginning to accept Jesus as the Jewish Messiah and thereby were now connected to the Jewish faith through that acceptance a set of rules were put into place; not for the purpose of salvation but for inclusion into the greater body of Judaism. The rules set upon for the Gentiles are known Theologically as the "Noahide Laws" and Acts 15:28-29 provides a synopsis of those laws:
"For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves ye shall do well..."
Based upon the scriptural prohibition given to us in Acts 15 Christians are prohibited from consuming any meats that may have been offered up to idols, which would most certainly include any Islamic certified "Halal" meat. As it is commonly known "Halal" meat is meat that has been set aside, consecrated and offered to the god of Islam making it unfit for either Jewish or Christian consumption.
There is another side to the “idol” point as well. Mecca, Saudi Arabia is home to the ‘Black Stone’ known in Arabic as al-Ḥajar al-Aswad. This rock is the eastern cornerstone of the Kaaba, the ancient stone building towards which Muslims pray, in the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
During the yearly ritual of the ‘Hajj’ Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba to stop and kiss the Black Stone, emulating the kiss that it received from Muhammad, according to Islamic tradition. The website Sacred Sites offers this explanation of the black stone,
Whatever its ultimate origin, the stone was most probably a sacred object of the pre-Islamic Arabian nomads who had settled around the Zamzam spring that flows at the center of old Mecca. Upon completion of the Ka’ba, Abraham and Ishmael, accompanied by the archangel Gabriel, then performed all the elements which constitute the Hajj ritual of today.
According to the original words of Muhammad, the Hajj pilgrimage is the fifth of the fundamental Muslim practices known as the 'Five Pillars of Islam'. The Hajj is an obligation to be performed at least once by all male and female adults whose health and finances permit it.
Entering the great Mosque in Mecca, the pilgrim first walks seven times around the Ka’ba shrine in a counterclockwise direction; this ritual is called turning, or tawaf. Next, entering into the shrine, the pilgrim kisses the sacred stone.
So in order for an animal to be slaughtered according to halal, it or the butcher must be facing Mecca and the Black stone, the very definition of idol worship.
Just 2 days ago Ahlul Bayt News Agency (ABNA) reported that an Australian Member of Parliament, Luke Simpkins, told the Parliament,
“By having Australians unwittingly eating Halal food we are all one step down the path towards the conversion, and that is a step we should only make with full knowledge and one that should not be imposed upon us without us knowing.”
Mr. Simpkins said he had carried out an unofficial survey in his northern-suburbs electorate of Cowan and had discovered that most meat at major chains such as Coles or Woolworths had been killed under Halal conditions, but had not been labeled as such.
He tabled a petition demanding that all Halal meat be clearly identified, complaining people could not buy meat for their "Aussie barbecue" without the influence of the "minority religion".
Mr. Simpkins said that Prophet Mohammed (s.a.w.w) had talked of how Islam could be expanded around the world by getting people to eat Halal meat. "He reportedly said, 'The non-believers will become Muslims when, amongst other things, they eat the meat that we have slaughtered'. This is one of the key aspects to converting non-believers to Islam," Mr. Simpkins said.
The petition tabled by Mr. Simpkins had been organised by the Barnabas Fund, an organisation that supports Christians living in Muslim countries.
The Barnabas Fund’s halal petition states: “The spread of halal is part of a Muslim commitment to Islamic mission (dawa) and the Islamisation of non-Muslim societies. The imposition of sharia practices on non-Muslims may be interpreted as an assertion of Islamic supremacy.”
Once again we must only look overseas to see where we in the U.S. are headed. Right now we can see the ‘Halal’ labels on our food, but how long before we are facing the same situation as Australia and not knowing?
I guess it all depends on if you care if what you are eating is halal. After all, you are what you eat.
