Between Halal and the Secular in London

Abstract

Outside Southeast Asia, London is emerging as a center for halal production, trade, and consumption. At the same time, the meaning and practices of halal are being transformed and contested. Paradoxically, in the eyes of many Muslims in Britain, this proliferation of halal calls attention to a form of impotent secular government, that is, in the eyes of some Malays, for example, “secular food” in Britain is a sign of the state’s unwillingness or incapacity to recognize the demands of religious consumers. Arguably, the frontiers of government should be “rolled forward” to protect consumers in the expanding halal market. In other words, the more the culture of Islamic consumption asserts itself and halal is globalized and delocalized as a religious market, the more the state’s incapacity to define what is legitimate halal and, thus, the unity of Islam is felt. Hence, modern and delocalized halal is pushing and challenging the frontier between “the secular” and secular government, on the one hand, and religion, on the other hand.

This chapter is a revised version of my article “Feeding Secularism: Consuming Halal among the Malays in London” (Fischer 2009b) in the journal Diaspora 18(1): 275–297. This journal is published by University of Toronto Press, and I am grateful for the permission given to use this material.