Halal No!

Do you know what “Halal” means? Halal is the method for preparing food required by Islamic law. This sounds pretty benign, right? After all, Islam is a religion and religions wouldn’t do anything that we would consider barbaric, right? And besides, it’s not like you or I need to participate in this. . . or do we? Believe it or not, you may be participating in this rather barbaric practice and not even know it. And there’s more.

In the past month, two things have come to light related to the issue of Halal dietary practice. The first involves the country of England. The second involves Campbell’s soup.

A recent Daily Mail investigation has revealed that schools, hospitals, pubs, restaurants, and famous sporting venues all over England (think Wembley) are now serving food that is prepared according to Sharia law. This includes schools that boast of a “strong Christian ethos” as well as schools that have done all the trendy liberal things from banning smoking to faking environmental data to refusing to invest in anti-liberal things like weapons makers and South Africa, etc. So now they’ve gone Halal. And we're not just talking about special requests like asking for a vegetarian platter. Indeed, England’s biggest restaurant chain has admitted that three-quarters of the poultry it serves is Halal chicken (usually procured from the country of Turkey).

Here’s the kicker: they’re doing this secretly. Yep. None of these institutions has alerted the public that the food they are being served was prepared according to Islamic law. When the big restaurant chain was asked why they didn’t disclose this information to customers, their spokesman gave the following bit of doublespeak:

“It is not mentioned on any of our menus because we don’t think there is customer demand for that information. But if people started asking, then we would definitely provide it.”

In other words, they justify hiding this fact because people haven’t asked them about it. That same reasoning could be applied to justify not telling customers about the health code violations, that the beef is actually human, that the chef has leprosy, or that the kitchen staff spent the night urinating in the soup pots. Oh, so sorry, you should have asked!

But, you ask, why would customers be upset about Halal foods? Here’s why: Sharia law expressly forbids knocking animals out before they are butchered. That’s right. A Halal butcher will slit the throat of the animal while it is alive and awake, allowing the blood to drip from the body as religious phrases are recited to praise Allah.

While Islamo-apologists claim the animals are dead within two seconds, research has shown that it can take up to two minutes for the animal to die because carotid arteries can contract after being cut, sealing the severed ends and maintaining blood pressure in the brain. (A grisly report on German slaughterhouses recently found similar issues where conscious animals were butchered or dropped into super-heated water to remove the skin while alive. But that was unintentional, Halal is not.)

Notably, animal rights groups are furious and they are demanding that Halal meat be clearly labeled, something typically required for the slightest possibility of unpleasant reaction in every other instance. . . but somehow not required in this instance.

And that brings us to Campbell. Campbell Soup of New Jersey is fighting a grass-roots boycott after its Canadian subsidiary rolled out a line of soups certified as Halal. Unlike the British problem, where the Halal sourcing remains a secret, Campbell at least is open about the Halal certification -- although I see no obvious markings on the packages, and it turns out that many things like tomato sauce or Romano cheese which you would think include only vegetables are made commercially using animal parts, which were procured using Halal methods.

But there’s an even bigger catch: the organization that certifies that these soups and other products are Halal compliant is called the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). ISNA was an unindicted co-conspirator in the prosecution of a “charitable organization” called Holy Land Foundation, which funneled money from the United States to Hamas, a group that even the State Department recognizes as a terrorist organization.

Think about that the next time you see a Campbell’s advertisement touting their patriotism or their place in your family’s pantry. Not only are they now offering products that include meats from animals that were, for lack of a better word, tortured in the name of Allah, but they have hired an organization with terrorist links to certify that the animals were properly tortured to please this bloodthirsty Allah.

Campbell, like all corporate bad guys, claims the boycott is not hurting their sales, and thus refuses to change to a non-terrorist-connected certifier. (They also claim these products will only be sold in Canada. . . at least until they change their minds.)

This is just the latest example of large corporations and their government counterparts not caring anymore about the public. They would change their entire way of doing business to avoid offending a small group like gays or environmental extremists, but forget about them being sensitive to the concerns of the public at large. In this case, these behemoth organizations have chosen to cater to the primitive practices of Muslims, even though Muslims make up only 1% of the population in the United States and 3.3% of the population in Britain. But what’s worse, they are foisting this on the rest of the public and they have chosen to deceive the other 99% of us to make that possible. Could you imagine them doing the same for a Christian group? Or could you see them standing up for some bit of traditional Americana? No. . . I can’t see that either.

Maybe it is time for a little anti-corporate populism after all.