The reliability of the establishments claiming to possess a ‘halal meat certificate’ is raising concerns among Muslims living in the United States since the owner of the biggest halal slaughter facility said 60 percent of “halal” certified meat was not actually halal.

The demand for “halal meat” from millions of Muslims in the US is met by many facilities.

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Details and conditions of the offer are mentioned in the blog announcement.

Last year, when we published a survey of advertising in Islamic and Muslim countries, the slideshow was one of our most popular galleries of commercial creativity.

From McDonald's famous golden arches in jarring Arabic script, to a beauty contest in which only women's eyes were shown, we were all fascinated by the way advertisers in strict religious cultures handled — or avoided — the universal themes of sex, wealth and consumption.

Now we've updated our survey of Arabic and Middle Eastern advertising.

The one thing that hasn't changed is the cleverness with which advertisers handle the burdensome rules on their creativity.

Tomoaki Sato, 19, is a first-year physics student at Waseda University in Tokyo. He has an interest in technology and is developing an app to help Muslims living in non-Muslim-majority countries to find and buy halal foods more easily. He was in the UAE at the end of last month as part of a delegation representing the Japanese-GCC Association of Students.

Warning: this dish is meant to be shared. Do not attempt to eat the whole thing yourself as it contains unnecessarily high amounts of butter, cream and milk. There’s a reason why there’s barakah (blessing) in sharing all those calories!

Pork DNA has been found in halal chicken sausages served in a primary school in Westminster, central London.

Keep your forks handy! This festival is still in the oven. In the mean time, fill out the form on the right so that you can be the first to know when tickets are available.

Perhaps it's time to think of alternatives to the meat industry. Two years ago my organisation, the Christian Muslim Forum, issued a halal statement, responding to another popular anxiety over unlabelled meat. The main thrust was that we need to know what we are eating.

One of the apparent reasons why halal (ritually slaughtered for Muslim consumption) meat is not always labelled 'halal' is because it is not tracked from pasture to plate. It may have begun as halal-slaughtered, but after that it enters the mainstream food chain and we now know that some mainstream 'beef' products have actually been 100% horse! So how could anything be labelled as 'halal', or the more pointed 'slaughtered without stunning', if we didn't know what was in it? We are right to be concerned: what else might be in our food if we can't trace (or criminals are circumventing) the supply chain? Once you ask that question, you won't look at the meat on your plate in the same way ever again.

The horsemeat scandal has raised significant consumer questions: what is in the food we eat, how can we be sure it’s properly labelled, and most importantly, who can we trust?

On the day that I write this, I received an email from a sister giving me advice (nasiha). I can (maybe) make documentaries, she told me—but certainly not fictional films. I should refrain from imitating the kuffar (disbelievers) in making movies. And for certain, I should be careful of engaging too much in the dangerous American culture. Lest I forget, our Prophet ﷺ told us, “Islam began strange, and it will become strange again…”

To be sincere, as a practicing (in sha’ Allah, God willing) Muslim in the film industry, I try my best to navigate my career while conforming to the principles and guidelines set down by my religion. Am I certain that I am making every correct decision in doing so? No, and I hope scholars will continue to guide me and start discussions to help others. Do I feel that Islam asks us to be foreigners, staying away from the arts, language and culture of the communities in which we reside? Absolutely not.

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