Re: The halal-ity of your food.
Queer passing fatwa on halal food ..
qiyamat qareeb hai bhaa'iyon.
Re: The halal-ity of your food.
Strange… Never heard of their being a shortage of local chicken… lived their for 27 yrs and family is still living there… No such issues and we only buy local cuz we dont like frozen chicken. Most ppl we know do so too and havent heard any complaints of their not being enough…
Re: The halal-ity of your food.
Not anymore. The demand is high and supply of local freshly slaughtered zabiha meat is less so they are importing from companies that say halal but if you're concerned about hand slaughtered or machine slaughtered then it's mostly the latter and a lot of folks aren't OK with that.
That's weird, there are so many poultry/dairy farms in Saudi arabia I can't imagine why they'd face a shortage. That said they are pretty strict about any food coming in, I remember many years ago someone pointed out that one of the ingredients of Kellogg's cornflakes was in fact not halal and there was a huge uproar, eventually Kellogg's had to clarify their position and prove them to be halal.
Re: The halal-ity of your food.
personal views are one thing and import records, sources of meat and practices at processing plants are another.
lets not get hung over the word shortage, lets just say local demand far exceeds local supply so it is imported.
Re: The halal-ity of your food.
my alima told me that that some of the meat from the fast food restaruants comes from Italy.
some people are getting confused with the 2 terms: Halal and Zabiha
as mentioned, Halal means lawful. That is, we can eat cows, cheep, goat, chicken, ducks etc. It is the pork that is Haram.
Zabiha is when this Halal - lawful - meat is slaughtered according to Islam.
So while it is Halal to eat meat from the People of the Book, how can you be so sure (unless it specfically says, for example, a kosher meal/restaurant) that the meat was slaughterd by the People of the Book? It could have been an atheisist, a Hindu, Buddhist, etc that actually slaughtered the meat. And how do you know if Allah's name was mentioned during the slaughtering? Yes, it could have been by the People of the Book (like a Christian), but who knows that they said/did in terms of how they slaughtered it?
So why take that chance? There are readily available Zabiha Halal meat around the world, and fish and veggie options are there when you eat out.
Here where I live, like Niksik said, there are issues with hand and machine slaughtering, and how one meat company puts a stamp of Zabiha approved meat, there is another group saying that this it technicially not halal. I dont know what to think about this. I don't buy meat from this company, but I know many people that do and cook using this meat when I go to dawats. it's been approved by some scholars as Zabiha.
for me, Islam is an easy religion and all these difference of opinions about technicial details confuses a person. But this whole issue of Halal and Zabihah as a whole is easy to follow.
Also...question..why do people think that eating non-Zabihah chicken is okay,but non-Zabiha beef? I see that often.
Re: The halal-ity of your food.
^^Thanks for sharing this.My understanding about the terms is the same.
Re. your last question,I have seen this a lot too...years ago someone gave me some Quranic reference.I have totally forgotten about it.But I wonder the same thing like you.
Re: The halal-ity of your food.
SO my question to you is that is it polite to ask that question or you just plain refuse a dawat invite from someone you're not sure of?
Its completely fine to ask politely. You can spin it though. like "Aray where do you buy meat from...." etc.
and no, we dont flatly deny it. There always is Salad and bread :)
Re: The halal-ity of your food.
Also...question..why do people think that eating non-Zabihah chicken is okay,but non-Zabiha beef? I see that often.
I think because there's more chances of beef being combined with pork and other scrap meat. at least that' what I noticed wheN I was reading labels of prepared ground beef products (like burger patties/meatballs)
Re: The halal-ity of your food.
Also...question..why do people think that eating non-Zabihah chicken is okay,but non-Zabiha beef? I see that often.
I'm not sure what the reasoning is exactly, but I have a couple friends who have grown up strictly eating Zabiha meat. Recently they have decided to eat non-Zabiha chicken sometimes, and for them I think it is to be social adults, sometimes people are just out together and wanting to share food, and they don't want to be the reason there is a restraint. I personally don't think the change was necessary on their part, but since I am even less strict than they are, I did not really know how to respond.