08/09/2026
Why Halal?
Discussing what makes food halal, where these guidelines come from, and why Muslims are commanded to follow them.
Unknown Authur
I don't always eat Halal.
Astaghfrillah
Sometimes I open my banking app, look at the price of that nice, juicy halal burger, and think...
“I can't afford this right now, Ya Rabb.”
So I settle for a $2 sandwich from a fast-food restaurant. Not halal and definitely not as delicious as that burger; and equally
is not something I'm proud of, and it's not something I want to normalize. But these moments have made me stop and think about something I probably wouldn't have questioned otherwise:
Why did Allah command us to eat halal food?
What truly makes something halal?
And if I say Bismillah before I eat, why doesn't that make the food permissible?
Allah tells us in the Qur'an:
“O mankind, eat from whatever is on earth that is lawful and good…”
- Qur'an 2:168
I've read this ayah before, but the more I think about it, the more that last part stands out to me:
lawful and good.
Not simply good.
Not simply lawful.
Both.
And that makes me wonder what Allah means when He asks us to eat what is lawful and why He placed boundaries around something as ordinary as food in the first place.
Because when we hear halal, most of us probably think we already know what it means.
No pork.
No alcohol.
No blood.
Simple enough, right?
But then I started wondering about everything that happens before the food ever reaches my plate.
Where does halal actually begin?
This is where I think we need to stop and define the thing we're talking about.
Halal simply means permissible or lawful. Haram is what is prohibited.
When it comes to food, that means Muslims aren't only looking at whether something contains pork or alcohol. The ingredients, the source of those ingredients, the animal itself, and- for meat - the way it was slaughtered can all matter.
The Qur'an gives us some of the clearest boundaries. Allah prohibits carrion, blood, pork, and animals that were slaughtered in the name of other than Him. Other verses and the teachings of the Prophet ﷺ give us further guidance about what Muslims can and cannot consume.
And this is where I started realizing that halal isn't really a label you put on food at the end of the process.
There is a process behind it.
For meat, that means looking at the animal and how it was slaughtered. For processed food, it can mean looking much closer at ingredients that we might normally overlook - gelatin, enzymes, flavorings, or other animal-derived ingredients.
This is also why you'll see halal certification on products and restaurants. Most of us aren't able to trace every ingredient or watch how every piece of meat was prepared ourselves. Certification gives Muslims a way to know that a particular product or establishment has been evaluated according to a particular halal standard.
And even here, there is nuance. Different certifying organizations can have different standards, and Muslim scholars have differed on some details of halal slaughter and processing.
So halal isn't simply “Does it have pork?”
It's a much bigger question:
“Has Allah permitted me to consume this?”