COMPARISON OF HALAL AND KOSHER

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Written by DR. M. CHAUDRY

Are you aware of the following about the Kosher Food?
In the Kosher system, alcohol is permitted. Alcohol could be found in food products that are certified Kosher. Products containing alcohol are clearly Haram for Muslim consumption and cannot be considered Halal. (We will leave the issue of the use of alcohol as a solvent or extracting agent for a future article. You can read it in the next issue of HalalPAK).
Foods that are cooked in wine or that contain wine or other alcoholic beverages can be Kosher but cannot be Halal. So for Kosher food items not containing meat, we must be sure the ingredients are acceptable before we can consume them. Once we confirm the item contains no prohibited ingredients, we can consume it because it is Halal, not because it is Kosher. The fact that it may also be Kosher is incidental.
As to the fact that the kosher lobby is work­ing hard to sell kosher foods to Muslims, this should not surprise us. The entire Jewish pop­ulation is 14-15 million in the world with about 4-5 million in the United States. Many, if not most of this total, do not adhere to the kosher requirements. This market size cannot justify many kosher products so in order to justify them; they must increase the market size by adding the Muslim Population.
The Kosher organizations have cleverly determined that they can suggest to the food industry that Muslims can eat kosher foods. Since the Global Muslim population is 1.3 bil­lion, with about 8 million in the United States, this gives them much more clout to sell kosher services. (You will note, there are almost 100 times more Muslims than Jews, and the Muslims are much more adherent to Halal requirements than the Jews are to Kosher requirements.) According to some surveys done by independent organizations only 19% of Jews care about the kosher food versus to 79% Muslims care about the Halal food.
Unfortunately, some Muslims have fallen prey to the argument that kosher food is Halal and that has been used to further the false propaganda. This has served to make Kosher foods much more economical. An example of this is kosher beef. Under Kosher require­ments, the hindquarter of the animal cannot be Kosher unless the sciatic nerve is removed. This is a costly process and would prohibitive­ly increase the cost of kosher beef. Kosher producers have worked hard to market the hindquarter of a kosher animal to Muslims. By doing this, they can sell the hind quarter at a premium, save the expense of removing the sciatic nerve and reduce the cost of the front quarter for their consumption.
We Muslims must wake up and adhere to our requirements. When we do that, we will enjoy greater blessings and peace. We do not begrudge others earning a living or optimizing the use of resources. However, we cannot make compromises in our requirements and we must look for ways to satisfy our needs. We need to be more careful about the kosher foods and let the food producers know we need Halal foods.