Halal Food: A History: A History

This is an interesting book, which I would recommend strongly. (I’d suggest that it should be read alongside Roger Horowitz’s outstanding *Kosher USA*.)
It deals in part with ritual food laws in Islam and their interpretation. It draws some parallels with Jewish regulations. (It also makes reference to Christian ideas; but there really is nothing comparable here – while a few groups hark back to Old Testament notions, a central theme of the New Testament was a renunciation of these things, in the context of Christianity seeing itself as being directed towards the world generally.)
There is (rather light) coverage of different schools of Islamic jurisprudence and their differences in respect of Halal regulations, and a lot of interesting material about the way in which the commercial food industry, and the spread of Muslims across the world, has led to the development of differing regimes of standards. (One might here have expected that there would be commercial pressure for the development of standards which comply with *all* major sets of regulations.)

This has pushed things in a conservative and rigoristic direction, although the issue of pre-slaughter stunning has been ducked, and it has been odd that there has not been much more concerted efforts put into the development of effective Halal alternatives to rennet and gelatine (which, indeed, could be developed as kosher, too). The authors seem unhappy about such developments. (One might see what is involved as an aspect of the much older tension between rigorist and folk interpretations of Islam.) They, however, both report on and also seem to like lifestyle-choice stuff which has a postmodern flavour.

All told, an interesting book, which has a really useful bibliography and which should give rise to much thought and further rresearch.

Amazing book.