Come on people, change your mind set!

By: Nurul Natasha Rosman
Assalamualaikum

Here is my first post in Halal Postgraduate Blog. More will be coming in future maybe? ;) Insya Allah

What is the issue that I want to share here?

Here come the issues. The issue of ignorant, the issue of following the normality, the issue of lack of knowledge.

In Malaysia, we are multi-racial country which means include a few types of religions and of course, there are muslim and non-muslim. Each religion has their own rule. For example, muslim are not allowed to consume anything that derives from pork and not allowed to drink alcohol.

However, since we are living in multi-racial country, there are some problems occur when the non-halal mixed together with the halal.

In order to avoid the halal and non-halal from mixed up together, Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia (JAKIM) was created under government. This organization will supervise every product (especially food) and will give halal certificate to products or restaurants that qualified for halal status. So this will ease muslim in this country to differentiate between halal and non-halal products.

 However, some of us don’t really mind about the halal issue. Maybe it is due to lack of knowledge or doesn’t want to find the knowledge, perhaps?

For example, we just enter any restaurant in the shopping mall as long as there is muslim eating inside there without checking the halal status of the restaurant. If there is muslim, that’s mean the restaurant is halal. No people, that is totally wrong!

And there’s also lots of delicious food, desert stalls inside the mall that doesn’t have the halal certificate. Even though the food was prepared by muslim, or malay, what if they never check the ingredients that they use? For example, in cheese cake making, some people use gelatin.

But, what if that person itself doesn’t even know that gelatin usually derive from pork?

That is why we have to care and gain knowledge.

That is also why we should not ignore everything around us especially about food that we eat and things that we use.

That is why we should not follow the normality. Doesn’t mean there is muslim inside a restaurant, the restaurant straight away considered as halal.

Come on people, change your mind set!