[Sca-cooks] "Halal" and "Kosher"

[Mark Calderwood]

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At 14:06 10/04/03 +0000, you wrote:
>In playing around with Andalusian/Maghribi recipes earlier this year, I
>started getting curious about Muslim dietary laws as compared to Jewish
>ones.  On the surface, "halal" and "kosher" share some similarities: no pork
>or pork products, ritual slaughtering of animals, that sort of thing.
>However, there are some differences.  Halal does not prohibit the
>consumption of meat and dairy at the same meal, for example, although it
>does prohibit alcohol.  Can anyone on the list take the comparisons further?
>  Are shellfish prohibited under halal, for example?  Certain body parts
>(Ras' proclivities notwithstanding)?

The Quran prohibits "carrion, blood and swineflesh, and that which has been
killed in the name of any other than Allah". Most foods are considered
halal, except a few prohibited (haram) foods:
    * Swine/pork and its by-products
    * Animals improperly slaughtered or dead before slaughtering
    * Animals killed in the name of anyone other than Allah
    * Alcohol and intoxicants
    * Carnivorous animals, birds of prey and land animals without external
ears (ie reptiles, insects)
    * Blood and blood by-products
    * Foods contaminated with any of the above products
Both halal and kosher prohibit swine, although halal allows most other
meats that kosher doesn't like rabbit and goat. I haven't come across
restricted body parts under halal, for example the camel's foot is a
delicacy offered an honoured guest. Certainly you see all kinds in a halal
butcher's.

Fish and seafood are trickier. The position of the Quran is pretty much
that anything that lives in the water is halal: "Lawful to you is the
pursuit of water-game and its use for food." Some hadith prohibit creatures
who live both in the water and on the land- crabs, tortoises etc, (pretty
much everyone agrees frogs are haram), and some scholars hold a stricter
interpretation that water-creatures without scales (lobster, prawns,
octopus, eel) are not permitted. Basically fish are halal, other stuff is a
judgement call if a strict an observance is being followed. (For processed
seafood, any added ingredients, flavors or cooking methods that introduce
haram ingredients would of course make the seafood haram.)

Halal and kosher both require slaughtering an animal in an approved method
(zabihah); in this case with the animal on the ground, using a very sharp
blade to sever the blood vessels in the throat while a blessing or the name
of Allah is spoken.

There is no requirement for separating meat and dairy under halal, for
example Madira dishes. Cheeses can be mushbooh or haram if they contain
animal rennet from a haram or non-zabihah animal.

Halal has three categories of food: halal (lawful), haram (forbidden) and
mushbooh ("suspected"/ doubtful, a small group including rennet,
shortening, glycerides, enzymes and whey), rather than "types" like meat,
milk, and pareve (neutral foods) in kosher. Halal applies only to food not
utensils as kosher does. Interestingly there doesn't seem to be any kind of
kashering in halal- If it's haram, it's haram.

Basically the purposes and principles of halal and kosher are the same,
halal looks like the more straighforward version.

Giles
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