Abstract
Campaigns against the halal certification of food in Muslim-minority societies reveal the shift in the representation of Muslims from a visible, alien presence to a hidden, covert threat. This paper uses one such campaign in Australia as a point of entry for analysing the ramifications for Muslim identity of this ‘stealth jihad’ discourse. Muslims living in the west are increasingly targeted not for ‘standing out’ as misfits, but for blending in as the invisible enemy. The scare campaign against halal certification closely parallels previous campaigns against kosher certification, highlighting the increasing resemblance between contemporary Islamophobia and historical anti-Semitism.
Highlights
In October 2014, a scare campaign against halal food certification2 that had been underway for some time on social media in Australia gathered momentum to the point of being widely reported by mainstream media as well
Bill Muehlenberg’s article ‘Creeping [S]haria law in Australia’ cites incidents such as the hosting by local councils of female-only functions to celebrate the end of Ramadan and lobbying by a Muslim organisation for a separate Muslim prayer room in a hospital in Perth as examples of this incremental conquest (Muehlenberg 2011: 9)
Placards proclaimed that ‘Islam is the enemy of the West’, ‘Halal is Sharia law’, and ‘Reclaim food free of [S]haria’
Summary
In October 2014, a scare campaign against halal food certification that had been underway for some time on social media in Australia gathered momentum to the point of being widely reported by mainstream media as well (see, for example, Fitzsimmons 2014; Masanauskas 2014). Perhaps the most bizarre target of the campaign was the beer maker Coopers, which found itself accused of providing halal certified beer in apparent ignorance of the Islamic prohibition of alcohol Coopers clarified on their Facebook page that their certification was not for their beer, but for their malt extract, which they supply ‘to major food manufacturers throughout Australia and the Asia Pacific. Burqas/niqabs were cited as a security hazard during this renewed moral panic, with the announcement of a measure (swiftly withdrawn) that ‘Persons with facial coverings entering the galleries of the House of Representatives and Senate will be seated in the enclosed galleries’: that is, in glassedin areas usually reserved for parties of potentially disruptive schoolchildren (Massola with Cox 2014; see Bourke and Massola 2014) Since both the regulation of burqas and the campaign against halal certification are based on the claim that Muslim religious practices are a security as well as a cultural hazard, it is unsurprising that the same politicians feature prominently on both issues, as instanced below. The campaigners against halal certification, position themselves as guardians of national security and as bastions of national honour and as a channel for national and international mourning
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