Meat production and consumption was severely restricted by the scarcity of water: camels were used to transport goods and slaughtered only in cases of necessity. While the Quran promises ‘rivers of milk’ and ‘rivers of purified honey’, the earliest Muslims living in the austere environment of the Middle East in the seventh century relied mostly on limited vegetation and milk products from camels, sheep and goats. In urban centres such as London, Manchester and Liverpool, secondary schools offer halal lunches to Muslim students.įor many Muslims today, this modern halal industry feels far removed from its origins in the Arabian Peninsula. Halal meat (including poultry) can now be found in supermarkets such as Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s. In the UK, multiple halal certification bodies compete to authenticate halal suppliers chains such as Nando’s, Subway and Chicken Cottage sell halal items, usually chicken, as part of their menus and Pizza Express serves only halal-certified chicken in all its 470 UK branches. Around 30 per cent of the global food market is now made up of halal products. Once a marginal sector (the UK was home to just 50,000 Muslims in 1939), the halal industry now influences every aspect of the worldwide food-supply chain. Nearly 70 years later, few areas of modern life remain untouched by the requirements of 2.7 million British Muslims. Men would buy chickens from farmers, former Asian farmhands or imams, who would render the food halal. Many urbanised Muslims sought out the services of agricultural workers who had resettled in the UK after the convulsions of empire. In cities such as Leeds and Manchester, where mosques weren’t available, Muslims prayed on factory floors or worshipped in converted flats. This included ‘halal’ food – meat and poultry killed in accordance with Quranic guidelines derived from the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. The new foreigners, usually men, sought places of worship and a dependable supply of nutrition associated with their homelands. When Muslims from India and Pakistan began arriving in the United Kingdom in large numbers in the 1960s, they imported two anxieties common to immigrants: what to eat, and where to pray.
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