What Does Halal Mean? Food, Meat and the Word, Explained

Halal is Arabic for "permissible" - what Islamic law allows. For food it means no pork, no alcohol, no forbidden animals, and meat slaughtered the Islamic way: one cut to the throat, God's name said, the blood drained. The opposite is haram, forbidden.

Every question about halal food Calgary people ask comes back to that. So I dug in. Here it is in plain language, with honest disagreements marked as such.

What does halal mean?

Halal is permitted. Haram is forbidden. In between is makruh, disliked but not forbidden. You'll also hear mashbooh (or mushbooh): doubtful. The source of an ingredient is unclear, so many Muslims skip it until it's clear.

The word also covers money and medicine. There's more on halal financing and whether medications are halal. But on a Calgary menu or shop sign, "halal" is a claim about food, and nearly always about the meat.

What makes food haram

Food is halal unless a text forbids it. The Quran names the main exclusions (2:173, 5:3 and 5:90), and the Prophet's teaching adds predators:

• Pork and anything from the pig - bacon, ham, lard, pork gelatin.
• Alcohol and other intoxicants - as a drink, and for most Muslims as an ingredient too, like wine in a sauce.
• Blood.
• Carrion - an animal that died before slaughter, including one killed by the blow or current meant to stun it.
• Meat dedicated to anything other than God.
• Predators - animals with fangs and birds with talons, as most schools read the hadith. The Halal Monitoring Authority's list also excludes reptiles, rodents, insects and domestic donkeys.

Everything else is halal by default: vegetables, grains, fruit, eggs, milk, fish. The hard part isn't the list. It's how the meat is handled, and what hides in processed food.

What is halal meat?

Beef, lamb, goat and chicken only become halal meat when slaughtered a certain way, called zabiha (or dhabiha), which just means "slaughtered":

• The animal is alive at the moment of the cut.
• The slaughterer is a Muslim. Many scholars also accept meat slaughtered by Jews and Christians, citing Quran 5:5. Many do not.
• God's name is said over the animal: "Bismillah, Allahu akbar."
• One quick cut with a sharp knife across the throat, through the windpipe, the food pipe and the jugular veins.
• The blood is fully drained.

On a Calgary sign, "zabiha" usually means the stricter claim: hand slaughter by a Muslim, with God's name said over each animal. A few Calgary counters make exactly that claim. What is halal chicken? and the Alberta beef write-up say which.

Looking for halal meat near me, not a definition? For YYC halal meat shops, see halal butchers in Calgary.

Where scholars and certifiers differ

Three questions divide well-read Muslims, and certifiers:

• Stunning. Many certifiers accept a reversible stun, as long as the animal is confirmed alive at the cut. Others reject stunning outright, because a stun that kills makes the meat carrion. Canadian rules allow ritual slaughter without a stun. For the welfare side, see is halal meat cruel.
• Machine slaughter of poultry. On fast chicken lines, a rotating blade cuts. The Halal Monitoring Authority rules it out, since nobody can say God's name over each bird. ISNA Canada permits it in some cases.
• Who may slaughter. The People of the Book question above is why some Muslims eat kosher meat when nothing halal is around, and others never will.

I'm not ruling on these. The word "halal" alone doesn't answer them. The certifier's name, or a straight answer from the butcher, does.

Is seafood halal?

Fish is halal in every school and needs no slaughter. Past fish, the schools split. The Shafi'i, Maliki and Hanbali positions allow almost all sea creatures: shrimp, crab, lobster, mussels. The Hanafi position, which most South Asian Sunnis follow, is narrower. Fish is fine, shrimp is disputed, and crab and lobster generally aren't eaten. Shia rulings require fish with scales, and allow shrimp.

So is lobster halal? It depends on your family's school. Halal seafood in Calgary takes each view to the city's fish counters and boil houses.

The grey zone in a Canadian grocery aisle

Most real-world doubt isn't about meat. Five things cause most of it:

• Gelatin - in gummies, marshmallows, yogurt and capsules. It's from pork unless the pack says beef, fish or halal. Some scholars hold that gelatin is so changed (istihalah) that its source no longer matters. Most halal shoppers avoid pork gelatin anyway. The halal candy list goes brand by brand.
• Rennet in cheese - traditionally from a calf's stomach. "Microbial enzyme" on a Canadian label is the version almost everyone accepts.
• Alcohol in flavourings - vanilla extract and some flavourings use alcohol as a carrier. Some scholars accept a trace; others avoid it.
• Mono- and diglycerides (E471) and glycerin - from plants or animals, and Canadian labels rarely say which.
• The shared fryer - halal chicken fried in oil that also cooks bacon. Many families draw a line here. Others don't.

What "halal" means on a Calgary sign

Canada has no government halal authority. Since April 2016, federal food rules require any halal claim on a label, package or ad to name who certified it. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency counts a restaurant menu as advertising. It doesn't define halal or approve certifiers. It only asks whose word it is.

The proof behind the word varies:

• A named certifier - common on packaged meat, and at chains like Popeyes, whose Canadian chicken supply is certified chain-wide.
• "Certified", with no name - a green badge on a website or a line on a menu.
• The kitchen's own word - a Muslim-run kitchen that buys from halal suppliers and says so. Most independent halal restaurants in Calgary work this way. It's an honest setup, not a loophole.
• Halal options - a regular kitchen with some halal items. Fully halal vs halal options explains that difference, and who certifies halal food in Calgary covers the paperwork.

Halal and kosher, in one paragraph

Both forbid pork. Both call for a single cut by a person of the faith, and both drain the blood. Kosher allows supervised wine and keeps meat and dairy apart. Halal forbids alcohol and has no meat-and-dairy rule, so a halal cheeseburger is normal. The full comparison is in halal vs kosher.

Cooking for a Muslim friend

Buy the meat from a halal butcher, not the supermarket case. Leave the wine out of the sauce. Check the gelatin in dessert. Use a pan that hasn't just cooked bacon. Then ask your friend. Standards vary by family, and nobody minds being asked. Rather eat out? Find halal food near me.