Halal Consumption as Ethical Practice: Negotiating Halal Certification in South Africa (original) (raw)
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This article is an analysis of the development of halal consumption in South Africa.Research on the contemporary consumption of halal has argued for an articulation of Muslim identity in a variety of settings. What evades these scholarly analyses is the production of halal as a commodity. How is it that halal consumption, as defined by Islamic dietary law, has been produced into a separately identifiable product? This paper argues that in South Africa the production of certified halal has been produced through an extensive campaign that identified the power of the Muslim consumer, consumption as an Islamic imperative, and the contemporary risks to halal presented by food technology and cross-contamination. Communicating with the Muslim consumer and identifying risks to halal consumption established a particular form of halal-certification expertise. The result was an increase in the visibility of halal and the establishment of halal-certification organizations as necessary intermediaries for the proper practice of halal. In the process taqwa was recalibrated to mean vigilance against uncertified consumption as the inspection of a halal label was introduced into the determination of halal.
Rethinking Halal: Critical Perspective on Halal Markets and Certification
Rethinking Halal, 2021
Etymologically, Halal means 'permitted'. Looked at logically, everything should be considered as permitted unless or until proven otherwise. However, halal today pervades the life of most Muslim societies, for many reasons. Religiously, it corresponds to what many Muslims consider as the good performance of their beliefs. Economically, it creates new opportunities for business. Politically, it corresponds to times in which identity issues became paramount. Socially, it relates to the need to cope with new realities without losing one's right to define the norms of the community. Legally, it is linked to the framing of 'traditional' norms in modern terms and categories. The outcome is that nowadays, the principle has been inverted and everything is taken as non-halal until proven otherwise. A no-trust principle is assumed and nothing can be accepted until certified as halal by a relevant body. The phenomenon of halal is part of a process of 'positivisation' that directly affected Islam and Islamic normativity, often called the shariʿa. In a continuum stretching from the most local to the most global, and from the legal to the technical and quasi-managerial, we can illustrate the many forms taken by this positivisation process, In its first stage, this process resulted in the transformation of the shariʿa into 'Islamic law', that is, in a hierarchical, comprehensive, codified, state-centred, and unified system of positive rules of law. The example of the 2000 law governing khul' divorce in Egypt is paradigmatic of the transformation of the fiqh into Islamic law, that is, a norm originating from Islamic sources interpreted according to the procedures and standards of positive law. Another illustration can be drawn from the lawmaking process, which in many Muslim-majority countries included the shariʿa or the fiqh in constitutions as sources of legislation, showing that nowadays, the components of the shariʿa must be spelled out in the constitutional text in order to become legally meaningful and consequential within the realm of positive law. The arena of international law, e.g. several rulings of the European Court of Human Rights, can also prove illustrative, since it shows how courts do not refer to the shariʿa-per se, but to the shariʿa made-into-positive-law. A last illustration, that of the ruling of the International Criminal Court in the Al-Mahdi case, illustrates how the Islamic normativity, while being both reified and positivised, is at the same time made illegitimate with respect to international and globalised legal standards. In its second stage, the process of positivisation created and affected other types of norms. These include technical and managerial norms, which have had a deep and global impact on the governance of contemporary societies. This holds true for norms inspired by Islam and Islamic doctrine which, through this positivisation movement, were reconceptualised and transformed. Within a framework of normative hyper-densification of social life, the use of such technical and managerial norms, taking the form of indicators and standards, complements or conflicts with legal norms. Islamic finance is a first example. While the justification for the search for a specifically Islamic form of financing is derived from Muslim jurists' opinion that revenue is only considered legitimate if it is derived from a real sharing of the risks that have enabled the revenue to be generated, it has led to Islamic financial institutions offering a variety of products
Journal of Food Products Marketing, 2019
The institutional theory, especially at an individual level, has not been conducted on halal consumers in South Africa. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the degree to which halal consumers who have higher institutional pressures are more expected to purchase halal food products. This study draws upon institutional theory to present empirical evidence that institutional factors may show a significant effect on halal consumer's purchase intention and buying behavior toward purchasing halal food products. A sample of 298 halal consumers in South Africa was selected. Data samples were collected via self-administrated questionnaires. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test study hypotheses. The study showed that all institutional factors have a direct effect on halal consumer's intention and indirect effect on buying behavior. Based on the results, normative pressures had a high significant effect among institutional pressures, followed by other factors such as mimetic and coercive pressures, respectively. This study is first of the uncommon studies examining halal consumers' purchase intention and buying behavior in a non-Muslim country, employing the institutional theory in the context of halal food consumption.
Halal Matters: Islam, Politics and Markets in Global Perspective
In this chapter, I examine women’s practices of food consumption and preparation in Marrakech’s medina. I explore how, in a context where the halalness of food products is taken for granted, domestic cooks as consumers use the local notion of beldi (Arabic for: native) to index food standards. My ethnography examines the central role played by a consumer’s knowledge of and degree of control over the food system, which stands in contrast to an increasingly disembodied label as that of global halal. The key argument I make is that in the absence of nationally institutionalised standards and an overall lack of trust in the larger food system, consumers rely on their own bodily and knowledgeable practices of self-certification to negotiate what they consider proper food. Through the contextual and situated notion of beldi, I illustrate how the abstracted, and hence for a Moroccan consumer initially unknowable, global is interacting with the embodied, and thus knowable, local in everyday practices of food consumption and preparation. This chapter thereby seeks to demonstrate that we can understand global halal better if we also look at complementary local indices.
Rethinking Halal. Genealogy, Current Trends, and New Interpretations
Leiden: Brill, 2021
This book invites to rethink certain aspects of halal, and in particular the issue of the halal market and halal certification in Muslim-minority contexts. Rather than limiting itself to elucidating the doctrinal traditions relating to halal/haram, or on the contrary, focusing only on the external economic, financial, political or demographic factors that explain the changes taking place, Rethinking Halal shows the need to underline the points of balance between the aspects of religious doctrine on the one hand and the economic or political contextual aspects on the other hand. Through the study of various countries, Rethinking Halal demonstrates that Islam underwent a process of positivisation, that is, a kind of reframing of its rules and principles through the lens of a characteristically modern standardising, scientificising, and systematising mind.
The Islamic consumer and the halal market
Despite the growing number of research papers dealing with Islamic consumption and the Islamic marketing themes, concepts like the Islamic consumer and what was used to be called the 'halal' market rise a considerable controversy. Through a literature review relating different theoretical perspectives such as postmodernism, Islamism and its effects on market places, this paper aims to improve our knowledge about the Islamic consumer behaviour and the new emergence of 'halal' market. Opposite to the mainstream thought, this paper argues that being a Muslim does not necessarily involve being an Islamic consumer. Therefore, the Islamic consumer is likely the consumer who seeks to consume some specific products and services that create and symbolise a particular Islamic social identity. This paper is almost the first to establish a clear definition of the Islamic consumer and also of the 'halal' market, distinguishing between the Islamic consumer and the Muslim consumer.
A Convergence in a Religion Commodification and an Expression of Piety in Halal Certification
Khazanah: Jurnal Studi Islam dan Humaniora
The relationship among globalization, modernity, the escalation of religiosity in Southeast Asia, and capitalism cause halal trend consumption raising. The phenomenon of halal certification in Indonesia is interpreted by scholars in myriads of thoughts. Some scholars describe it as a form of religion commodification with more profit oriented, rather than referring to Islamic values or the philosophy of the halal concept. The Islamic symbols are used as trading commodities or marketing goods. The other scholars interpret the issue as an effort to manifest the religious teaching and an expression of piety. Halal certification is a diffusivity phenomenon of sacred (concept of halal, piety) with profane thing (trade and commodification). The existence of halal certification in Indonesia is urgent owing to the inability to control the escalation of products distribution in the domestic market as a result of the food technology, technological engineering, biotechnology and biological chem...
The Politics of Halal Label: Between Economic Piety and Religious Ambiguity
Al-A'raf : Jurnal Pemikiran Islam dan Filsafat
The use of the ‘halal’ label was expanded. Label, which is originally shown on food and beverage products only, but currently also shown on non-food and beverage products, such as tissue, pan, and refrigerator. It is a phenomenon of halalization; an expansion of halal label for the product consumed by the Muslim community. Based on the qualitative method, the results of this study show that the Millennial Muslim generation’s understanding of halal is varying and affected by varying sources of knowledge and internet use. Knowledge source was no longer lies on Kiai/Ustadz only, but also on searching engine available in cyberspace. Social media and the internet also become media used by millennial Muslim generation to search for information on the product’s rightfulness. Millennial Muslim generation just wants to use a product with a halal label, and an affordable price. If it is unaffordable, they will choose other affordable products volitionally despite no halal label. The contestat...