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The global halal market Interview with Florence Bergeaud-Blackler

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About my book Le marché halal ou l'invention d'une tradition (Seuil, 2017) This is a translation of my paper published in French in « Le marché halal mondial », Revue du MAUSS, vol. 49, no. 1, 2017, pp. 48-61.
This paper is published in French in « Le marché halal mondial », Revue du
MAUSS, vol. 49, no. 1, 2017, pp. 48-61. Translated by the author.
The global halal market
Interview with Florence Bergeaud-Blackler
1
Dr Florence BERGEAUD-BLACKLER
Senior research fellow - Chargée de recherche (HDR)
Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités UMR 8582 - EPHE/CNRS
Page : www.bergeaud.blackler.eu
IS THERE A TRADITIONAL HALAL?
François Gauthier - Your book outlines the birth and development of a globalized halal market. How did this
book come about?
Florence BERGEAUD-BLACKLER - This book is based on twenty years of research that has led me to
slaughterhouses, butcher shops, shops and the offices of major food groups. I have investigated in standardisation
committees in Paris or Sarajevo, in the corridors of ministries, the European Commission, in international halal
shows in Brussels or Casablanca and with consumers in several European countries.
F. G.- It is entitled "The Halal Market or the Invention of a Tradition". Why this title?
F. B. -First of all, I would like to clarify that I am talking about the "market" or "market standard" of halal, and
not about "halal" in its theological definition, which means lawful, permitted. In summary, there are at least two
different uses of halal, one theological and the other commercial. In the Koran, alal means lawful, it refers to
things (such as food) and sometimes institutions (such as marriage) that have been allowed by God in relation to
the things he has forbidden (haram). With the institutionalization of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), jurists adopted
a progressive system of categorization of acts around the nineteenth century, resulting in a classification scale of
five categories of acts ((al-akām al al-k̲ h̲ amsa)) (and even six for Hanafites). It distinguishes between: 1)
mandatory; 2) recommended; 3) lawful/unlawful; 4) reprehensible; 5) prohibited (wād̲ j̲ ib, mandūb, mubah/d̲
j̲ āʾiz, makrūh, arām). In the enunciation of these categories, mubah (permit) is located in the middle, between
the mandatory and the prohibited, between the recommended and the reprehensible. It is what is not qualified,
which is both legal and indifferent. "Halal" as a noun does not make sense in theology.
1
Around his book: Le Marché halal, ou l'invention d'une tradition, Seuil, Paris, 2017. Interview conducted by François Gauthier.
The substance of the adjective halal is contemporary with the halal market born at the end of the 20TH century.
With the emergence of this market, halal is not only what Muslims can do according to the school they attend, but
what they must do to be a "good Muslim" in a globalized "Umma" (Muslim community). It does not only regulate
the slaughter ritual but refers to a consumption regime for the "Muslim" described by halal marketing as a
particular category of humanity with its specific "needs". All commercial sectors are concerned by halal
standardization: food of course, but also cosmetics, medicines, household products and environments and services
such as logistics, hotels, tourism etc. In my book, I show how this commercial use of halal was born from the
encounter between two ideologies at the end of the 20TH century: neoliberalism and religious fundamentalism that
puts theology (theos in its vertical dimension) and religion (religiousness, in its horizontal social dimension) under
tension.
HALAL TODAY
F. G. - Halal has become a major issue in recent decades, contributing to the visibility of Islam. How did halal
become a "invented tradition"?
F. B. -B.- I borrowed the paradoxical formula of "invented tradition" from the British historian Eric Hobsbawm,
who distinguished it from "custom". In short, while custom is relatively inert and self-evident, the invented
tradition is constantly justified and mandatory. It has its owners and guardians, it is dynamic. In this book intended
for a wide audience, I wanted to say three things. First, that the halal market has a recent history, it is not an
imported custom. I retrace its creation and evolution over the past four decades, and I try to understand its dynamics
of expansion: how it went from butchery to what is now called, in international trade fairs, "the global Islamic
economy" that includes and links industry and finance. I wanted to show that the halal market is the product of an
unscheduled meeting between neoliberal capitalism and Islamic fundamentalism. Finally, I wanted to draw
attention to the fact that, in our secularized societies, the market can be a vehicle for religious people and that we
must include in our analyses this economic dimension, triangulate the dual political-religious relationship by
adding this third term. I have also proposed an analysis of some controversies surrounding halal that can be
reconsidered in the context of the historicization of this market: the question of the halal tax to finance Muslim
worship in France (where the separation between state and worship is in the Constitution), ritual slaughter and
animal welfare, the question of halal in public places in a secular ‘laïque’ country, etc.
F. G.- Halal is often brought closer to kosher. Is this legitimate? Is halal different from kosherout?
F. B. -They are assimilated to each other. But these markets have not occurred under the same condition. They
result from different histories and, of course, and do not refer to the same religious corpus. The kosher market is
several hundred years old, it was born artisanal and what we see today is the result of a progressive industrialized
version. The halal market was born industrial, explicitly inspired by the Kosher model and it benefited from the
legal arrangements provided for kosherout. The scope of halal is now much wider than that of kosherout, which
applies mainly to food and concerns a smaller market. For the food sector alone, the world market for kosher
products is estimated at 3% of the world halal market and the later could represent, according to optimistic
estimates of marketing agencies 12% of the world food market.
Of course, they have in common a founding practice of ritual slaughter, but here again the industrial versions
of Jewish ritual slaughter and Muslim slaughter differ. In the case of slaughter planned by Jews, religious
intervention includes a bleeding procedure (the shehita) and a control (or check: bedika) of the pulmonary system
by trained and dedicated religious personnel. If the bleeding or the result of the examination is not found to be in
conformity, the carcass is declared trefa (not kosher). In the case of halal, the bleeding is not carried out by religious
personnel but by a Muslim slaughtererer employed by the slaughterhouse or rented to a halal control agency that
does not necessarily have a link with a religious institution. In the end, in practice, it is the industry that decides
what will be declared halal on the market. Since this situation leads to a certain distrust of halal products among
consumers, manufacturers try to specialize this industrial rite, they employ trusted producers: halal control
agencies, which themselves work to compensate for their weak religious legitimacy by accentuating visible signs
of piety. Since the shochatim (Jewish priests) are very recognizable, halal priests and controllers grow beards,
accentuate the mark of prostration on the forehead, etc. make their prayers very ostensibly. The shechita is their
model.
F. G.- What have been the steps in the emergence of a halal market and who are its main actors? Modernist
or traditional Muslim religious leaders? The States? Actors from the entrepreneurial world? "Muslims"?
F. B. -In the first part of the book, I show that the halal market was born out of the development of a "halal
convention". By convention, I mean agreement on the principle but not necessarily on the terms. The principle of
a "halal standard" for slaughter has become established without market operators being able to define it precisely.
The principle of a universal Islamic industrial slaughter protocol has been established. This convention was
established at the beginning of the 1970s and 1980s, a period characterized by international geopolitical
developments: on the one hand, by the rise of pan-Islamism, that of the Islamist opposition parties to which Muslim
states responded to curb the movement through the Islamization of morals, reforms to the family code, etc. on the
other hand by the triumph of neoliberalism (Thatcher came to power in 1979 and Reagan in 1981) and the latest
wave of economic globalization.
I distinguish three steps towards this fixation, which I will then detail. The first is the creation of an "Islamic
industrial slaughter modus operandi" that will lead to the 1980-1990 "halal meat market", in which Saudi Arabia
and Iran have played a central role. The second step corresponds to the publication of the halal guidelines of the
codex alimentarius, which gives rise to a standard of industrial purity and will expand the halal market beyond the
food sector alone (in 2000, Malaysia's role is predominant). The third stage corresponds to the years 2010, with
the emergence of a "global Islamic economy" through the establishment of a link between the halal goods and
services industry and Islamic finance (in 2010, where the United States plays a major role).
In societies where Islam is the majority, animals are slaughtered using techniques that respect the main Koranic
prohibitions. These have been interpreted in many ways by scholars and lawyers from different legal schools. In
other words, there is not a single legal way to kill in the different cultures of dar el islam (the Muslim world), I
refer to Maxime Rodinson's highly documented article in the Encyclopedia of Islam, at the entry "Ghida". The
codification of the "halal slaughter rite" used in the singular occurred in the industrial era, so it is a relatively late
achievement. It first took the form of a derogation in British law in the early 1920s to allow "lascars" - Muslim
sailors of the Indian Empire who worked on ships linking the British Empire to its colonies - to slaughter them
when they arrived in Scottish ports. But this right was not systematically used because, during the 20TH century,
the position of the religious authorities was that of the reformer Mohammed'Abduh, who put forward verse 5 of
Sura 5 ("The table served") which allowed Muslims to consume the food of the people of the Book: Jews and
Christians
2
.
HALAL: THE CHILD OF POLITICAL ISLAM AND THE MARKET
Since the 1970s, in a context of globalization of food trade and economic development in the Middle East
(thanks to oil revenues), two Muslim states have played an active role in setting up an industrial halal slaughter
modus operandi: Iran and Saudi Arabia, two powers, one Shiite and the other Sunni, which were then competing
for hegemony over global Islamic preaching, da-wah.
F. G. - This question is important: what is the relationship between these two competitors for the hegemony of
a rigid Islam, the revolutionary Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, and the emergence of the halal market?
F. B. -B. - Ayatollah Khomeyni shortly after his arrival at the head of the First Islamic Republic in 1979
declared the importation of meat from Western countries illegal on the grounds that it was impure. He solemnly
announced that the carcasses of imported animals would be transformed into fertilizer to the amazement of the
exporting countries' opinions. But this political act intended to symbolically erect the borders of the Muslim world
against the Western Infidels raises practical problems of meat supplies, particularly to the urban classes in Tehran.
Importing Muslim countries such as the Shah's Iran, Saudi Arabia or Egypt had until then simply requested formal
guarantees through their embassies. Khomeyni sends a delegation of mullahs, these high religious officials, to
Islamize the industrial slaughter chains and place them under Muslim control. Despite protests from trade unions
against discrimination in employment (only Muslims will be employed), manufacturers accept this control - which
is not technically binding - because they hope it will give them a competitive advantage in the markets of Muslim
countries that are opening up to mass consumption. From a legal point of view, there is no difficulty since the
2
See Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, 2015, "De la fatwâ du Transvaal au marché halal : ouverture et fermeture de l'espace alimentaire
musulman (1903-1980)", in BERGEAUD-BLACKLER F. (dir.), Les Sens du H alal : une n orme dans un marché mondial, CNRS, Paris, pp. 63-
100.
regulations of secularized exporting countries provide for a derogation for "religious rites", a specific treatment
set up for the shehita.
At the same time, the World Muslim League, a global preaching body linked to Saudi Arabia - but which also
includes members of the Brotherhood of the Muslim Brotherhood - established a link between halal money and
preaching. The WML suggests that Sunni Gulf countries should only purchase deliveries certified by Muslim
diaspora groups promoting and disseminating a vision of Islam compatible with its strict and exclusive Wahhabi
vision. The control of halal meat is becoming a means of exerting pressure on the religious organization of migrant
nationals and a challenge for the representativeness of Islam in the diaspora. Groups competing for local Islamic
representation in non-Muslim countries claim a monopoly on certification: halal means law, it means representing
authority. Even some secularized states encourage this link between representativeness and control of the norm.
This is the case in France where, probably still believing that it is under a concordant regime (!), the Minister of
the Interior Charles Pasqua tried, in the 1990s, to set up a kind of "halal kosherout" in order to give the power of
institutional, normative and financial control to the only mosque in Paris. He will fail. However, the Grand Mosque
of Paris will retain a privilege: that of appointing priests, a privilege that will be extended by Charles Pasqua's
successor, Jean-Louis Debré, to two other Grand Mosques (Evry and Lyon).
THE EXTENSION OF THE HALALISABLE DOMAIN
F. G.- Are there any other actors? Countries in Southeast Asia, such as Malaysia, are very active in halal
production and standardization. When did these countries enter the round?
F. B. -A second step was decisive in the global expansion of the halal market. The publication in 1997 of the
halal guidelines of the codex alimentarius. It is a standardization body set up by the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1963, recognized after
its creation in 1995 by the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is a neoliberal instrument responsible for ensuring
that food products circulating in the world have a minimum standard of health and environmental safety, but also
for combating disguised forms of protectionism. The halal guidelines were inspired by halal standards introduced
in Malaysia in the 1980s, a country that has made Islam a means of economic development and a political
instrument for promoting Malaysian culture against Chinese economic domination.
In addition to codifying halal slaughter, the halal codex guidelines introduce a principle of purity. They prohibit
the identification as halal of products contaminated with illegal substances: alcohol and pork, without specifying
the minimum content. Many additives, colourings, thickeners, flavour enhancers ubiquitous in industrial foods
become illegal. This ritual purity becomes industrial purity. Because products, processes and environments can be
contaminated by illegal substances, all food products are made suspect and must be subject to a halal guarantee
certificate. As haram detection technologies improve, suspicion grows, the space for halalisable products
increases. The dynamics of the expansion of the halal market can be summarized as follows. What is declared
haram leads to the marketing of a ‘halal’ version. Declaring illegal the DNA of pigs or substances declared impure
leads to halalization of fish. For example, fish that have been able to feed on waste on the seabed (e. g. with ham
packages) are contaminated and made illegal. But suspicion alone can also be enough to create halal. The perfect
illustration is the halal water bottle which is guaranteed to be bottled in an uncontaminated space. This extension
of the halal perimeter is evident in Malaysia, Singapore or Indonesia, but it is spreading in the world.
The government policy of halalizing the economy (the New Economic Policy from the 1980’s) has made
Malaysia the hub, the halal world hub of the halal industry. But this position, coveted by other countries such as
Turkey, is now being contested by the United Arab Emirates, which has renewed the message by further expanding
the halal system. "The halal industry cannot be financed with haram money. "In other words, the finance of the
halal industry must be Islamic. The rich monarchies of the Gulf are naturally dedicated to providing this banking
service for the halal industry.
F. G. - What we understand from reading your book is how extensible "halal" is, and embraces an amazing
variety of products and services, far beyond food.
F. B. -B.- Today, Dubai wants to succeed Kuala Lumpur as the head of the ‘halal empire’. It presents itself as
a kind of Islamic Davos. Its objective is to link a halal industry to Islamic finance, bringing together sectors as
diverse as cosmetics, travel, tourism, media, Islamic fashion, etc. The United States now organizes information on
this market through Thomson Reuteurs and the British-American Islamic Marketing Agency DinarStandard,
which produces annual reports on the state of the global Islamic economy. Their figures are taken up without the
slightest critical distance by our major media. By creating the International Halal Accreditation Forum (IHAF), an
international accreditation body, Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Gergawi, the very active Minister of the Cabinet
Affairs and Future wishes to regulate international halal standardization. The Emirates also initiated the
recognition of "Islamic marketing" as an academic discipline. For the business world, Dubai has the dynamism of
Asian dragons while being authentically Arab and Islamic.
Thomson Reuters (2015) estimates that the market for halal products is $1,200 billion for the agri-food sector
and $1,900 billion ($1.9 trillion) when cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, fashion, leisure, tourism are added,
representing 12% of the global market. However, these dizzying figures should be wary. A market always starts
with numbers. These correspond to a still imaginary world where all the Muslims in the world (more precisely
those who answered "yes" to the question: "Islam is important") would form a community of consumers who
would not eat, would not dress, would only go to halal theme parks. This halal world does not exist, but the fact
that serious marketing firms produce these figures and images, taken up by our most serious media outlets, has an
impact on the dynamics of this market. Every market is the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to
investment. It is by projection, anticipation, speculation that a market occurs.
HALAL AS A LANDMARK AND IDENTITY FRONTIER
F. G. - So far, you have mainly talked about the dynamics of the halal offer, but it has met with phenomenal
success with the public, especially in Western countries. What about the demand?
F. B-B.- A market is born from the meeting of supply and demand. In Europe, throughout the 20TH century,
the dominant discourse among Arab religious elites, from modernists to Islamist fringes, was that of the reformist
Mohammed'Abduh, who relied on the verse that allowed people in the Book to eat for Muslims. Among the first
labour migrants, religious sacrifices were mainly related to exceptional occasions, not necessarily to daily
consumption. This changed at the end of the 20TH century with the changing profile of immigration, particularly
with the arrival of women as well as Islamist intellectuals and students. The supply of halal for export will be
captured by Muslims in the diaspora. Dynamics of re-Islamization (Islamist), diasporic dynamics combine with
economic dynamics to create a solid demand for halal-certified products.
All groups arriving in emigration develop group conservation practices through strategies of endogamy or
cultural or religious homogamy that involve the control of girls' sexuality and, less often highlighted, through the
control of cooking. Muslim women, who arrived in France in greater numbers in the 1980s mainly from north
Africa and Turkey, played an important role in maintaining the community border. They are at the origin of
primary religious socialization, of relations with the supernatural world - very present in Turkish Maghrebian and
sub-Saharan African families (demons, jinns, Satan, the evil eye) -, but also of food socialization which includes
the rules of food purification and transformation. They oriented the butcher's offer, asking for meat slit like in a
village for their cooking, a meat with a light hue sign of good exsanguination, of purity as the custom requires, not
a meat considered as jifa, an impure and evil "carrion".
Children born of migration have received a double religious socialization, that of mothers, transmitted orally,
that of religious structures (Islamic associations, Koranic schools), rigorist and rationalist, invested by Islamic
students in the sphere of influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. The latter have reinforced the food closure of
primary socialization by providing rational reasons inspired by religious texts for the rejection of uncontrolled
foods. Halal-certified baby jars have found easy acceptance in this generation of adult immigrants, who pay great
attention to labels on consumer products. Certification agencies have become religious agents who, through the
discourse on consumption, disseminate a literalist, legalistic, normative and exclusive reading of Islam. Mistrust,
combined with the extension of prohibited areas, leads these consumers to a desire for protected halal spaces.
Supermarkets have their own separate halal department, far from the deli department. Quick has excluded pork
from its restaurants. Merchants play the game of this industrial purity that separates time and space because
technologies, accounting traceability, have made it relatively easy.
F. G. - Is halal closer to "organic"? Do ecological and Islamic green converge?
F. B-B.- Industrialists know how to make what economists call "credence goods" in complete autonomy. They
define them as goods whose quality cannot be determined by the buyer's experience, and contrast them with
"experience goods". When it comes to food, we cannot experiment with organic, fair trade, we believe or do not
believe what is indicated on the label. The market knows how to manufacture belief goods because normative
institutions - born of neoliberal policies of systematic destruction of trade barriers - have been able to produce
environmental, health or social justice standards, to elaborate acceptability thresholds, to codify them in texts, in
international standards.
Halal products are therefore ‘goods of belief’. However, what makes them special is that they are also ‘goods
of salvation’. This is where things get complicated for merchants. Let me summarize. The halal industry needs
several factors of production to produce halal-labelled products: capital, labour, material or energy, knowledge
like any other productive enterprise. It will source each of these factors from different markets. The halal industry
must therefore seek the religious market. In addition to being competitive - and especially at this time - this market
is not like any other, only intended to serve the market. It has its own economy that extends beyond the earth's
horizon. Companies are dependent on what the religious market is willing to give them. If the religious market is
turbulent, as it is today in the Muslim world, where we have not emerged from the crisis of religious authority
since the end of the Turkish caliphate (1923), companies are caught in real storms. They have little control over
the standard, constantly threatened by changing standards in an unpredictable market.
F. G.- Who provides this religious input?
F. B. -To ensure the translation from religious to standard, the halal market relies on hybrid agents which are,
I stress, inseparably religious and commercial. I have identified three types of hybrid religious and commercial
organizations that work with industrialists at the three key levels of production, regulation and consumption:
- the (most recent) Islamic Marketing Agency,
- the halal control and certification agency (the oldest),
- the Muslim Consumers' Association.
The Islamic Marketing Agency (often occupied by marketing and sociology scholars !) manufactures upstream
of the advertising discourse for industrials to address their production on demand (halal, burkini, and another
modest mode, tourism). The certification agency (which uses control instruments developed by engineers and
scientific laboratories) approves and certifies products and services. Finally, associations defending the "Muslim
consumer" adjust expectations, formalize buyers' demand for halal and alert consumers when their "specific needs"
and “rights” are not met. These three form a system, they provide Islamic discourse constantly to the point of
saturating the space with meaning. They are often linked to religious groups belonging to conservative or even
fundamentalist tendencies.
Industrialists can only work with organizations that are recognized in law, have a viable economic model, and
are able to transform a complex exegesis of several centuries into a manufacturing standard. Today, only those
who have a fundamentalist understanding of religion are capable of this.
THE HALAL HORIZON, HALAL FOR THE HORIZON
F. G.- In your opinion, how will this extension of the halalisable domain develop? Do you foresee a slowdown
or slowdown, or a sustained expansion?
F. B. -B.- I am not an economist and I will not venture into prophecy. However, I note that the extension of the
perimeter of halal from Asia is confirmed in Europe and in the diasporas because it combines two forces, a market-
driven innovation force and a force of inclusion in the religious system by increasingly hegemonic
fundamentalisms.
In my book, I distinguish two models of halal standards: an inclusive model of halal for Muslims, and a model
that I call "ummic" by Muslims. Both models refer to Islam and include Muslim intermediaries. For me, the
distinction between a "fake halal" made by unscrupulous merchants and a real halal made by religious people is
absurd. The model I call inclusive, born in Malaysia and promoted by multinationals like Nestlé, innovates and
extends the norm, the second "ummic" promoted by Turkey or the World Islamic League seems to challenge the
first but ends up appropriating its technology and its field of innovation. In a sense, this dynamic is based on the
opposition of Islam Occident, this great "emotional polarizer", to use Georges Corm's expression, which is a real
driving force. The extension will stop when the polarization no longer works, when the halal bubble bursts. For
the time being, it must be noted that this configuration is ensured by a global political and religious context that
continues to essentialize both Islam and the West).
F. G. - In conclusion - and with thanks to you - what does this boom in the halal market represent for secularist
regimes?
F. B. -Halal marketing takes up the arguments of the defenders of multiculturalism, tolerance and inclusion by
caricaturing them in order to put them at the service of a separatist, unequal and exclusive model. This is not the
least of the paradoxes. After all, what is this halal market based on a standard of industrial purity leading us to if
not to a separation of places of commensality and conviviality, to a society of suspicion and mistrust and, finally,
to a separation of the means of production, if not to a form of economic war?
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