Controversy has been building up over the selling of unlabelled halal meat in British supermarkets. According to the Mail on Sunday many hundreds of schools, pubs and restaurants are serving meat that has been slaughtered according to Islamic law and the public are completely unaware that it is happening. Reaction to the story has come from two different directions: the animal welfare lobby are concerned about the pain and suffering of the animals and some Christians are concerned about the spiritual implications of eating meat ritually prepared. This post will be mainly concerned with the spiritual aspects.

Halal meat

For meat to be halal – or acceptable within Muslim law – the animal has to be alive and conscious at the point when the knife enters the throat. Once the cut has been made the blood is allowed to flow out of the animal until it dies. Another important feature is that the one who does the slaughtering has to make a religious declaration while making the cut: ‘In the name of Allah, who is the greatest’. A strict interpretation of Islamic law would insist that each individual animal has to be killed by hand while the declaration is made. However, more liberal Muslims apparently are happy for the process to be mechanised and for the words to be spoken over a large number of animals at the same time. It would seem, therefore, that what is halal for one Muslim may not be for another. It is important to point out that, as I understand it, while there is a religious element to this slaughter, it is not a sacrifice to Allah. It is merely the preparation of meat for human consumption in a way that makes it acceptable to eat according to Islamic rules.

It is also worth noting that all animals are slaughtered by the cutting of the throat and allowing the blood to flow out of them. The only difference between halal and non-halal meat is that the animals are stunned before cutting and that no religious words are used during the process. Animal welfare groups believe that the stunning reduces the animal’s suffering. Though an exception for religious type slaughter (for both Muslims and Jews) was made in The Welfare of Animals (Slaughter or Killing) Regulations 1995 – removing the need for pre-stunning – strict rules are still applied to halal methods, including the requirement to inspect the knife used for slaughter before it is used to make sure that it is sharp and long enough to make one interrupted cut.

While religious rules for what constitutes halal meat are as strict as secular ones it would appear that in practice methods are significantly different. In a fact that The Mail on Sunday fails to point out, but that is helpfully included in the Guardian, some 90% of so-called halal meat produced in UK slaughterhouses is actually stunned before being killed. According to traditional Muslim teaching this would render the meat non-halal – a fact which will surely calm Mail readers’ fears.

Christian reaction

The fear stirring within some Christians centres around the issue of eating meat sacrificed to idols. Both Christian Voice and Archbishop Cranmer have been posting their concerns about this issue and helpfully provide us with some Bible verses which they believe are relevant. Christian Voice list a number of Old and New Testament passages that warn the believer (Jewish and Christian) of the dangers of idolatry, stating, ‘The injunctions against idol worship are clear’. And so they are. Idolatry is a serious sin in the eyes of God according to the Bible and surely all Christians would agree. (Whether all would agree that ‘Allah is plainly an idol’ is another issue entirely but in dealing with the specific issue of halal meat I’m willing to leave CV’s general narrative unchallenged in this post.) None of these passages, however, couple the eating of meat – even meat that has been sacrificed to idols – with an act of worship. That is, if Christians eat such meat they are not themselves worshipping the idol and thus contravening the OT passages listed by CV. There are other concerns, but the Bible does not say that this is one of them. So we can safely say that this would not be an issue if a Christian ate halal meat.

The NT passages, also referred to by Cranmer, are the ones that are of particular interest to this debate since they deal specifically with the issue of eating meat – Acts 15:20; 21:25; Rev 2:14, 20; and 1 Corinthians 8 and 10. All of these passages refer to meat that has been sacrificed to idols in the pagan temples. It was common-place for animals to be offered to the pagan gods as an act of worship. A third of the animal would be burnt on the altar; another third would be eaten in the temple by those making the offering and the final third given to the priests. Despite the ritualistic element in halal meat, the preparation of it is not an act of worship and not a sacrifice to Allah. It is merely meat that is prepared for consumption by people. These passages do not refer to meat that is eaten every day by non-Jewish or non-Christian people, or idolaters if you prefer, though most meat eaten in those times could well have been meat first sacrificed to idols. Of course, the poorer you were in 1^st century Asia and Europe the less meat you would have. Many pagan temples served as butcher’s shops and eating places as well as being a place for worship and the rich would enjoy sumptuous meals which included meat from the temples – meat that had been offered to the gods as sacrifice.

A problem in Corinth

Problems arose in Corinth when Christians were invited to share in these meals and it is this specific context that Paul is addressing in his first letter to the church there. In the eighth chapter Paul addresses the issue of some eating these meals with no sense of guilt while others had their consciences seared by the thought of trespassing in such a way. The issue seems to revolve around the fact that some had a ‘knowledge’ that since there is only one God idols are nothing to be concerned about and that, therefore, there shouldn’t be an issue over eating meat sacrificed to them. Paul seems to agree with the substance of this viewpoint. However he is concerned about the welfare of those who do not share in this knowledge and whose conscience is troubling them. It is for their sake, those who are weaker in faith, that those who are stronger should desist from eating such meat. Presumably if they were to eat such meat in the privacy of their own home there wouldn’t be a problem.

In 1 Cor 10 Paul is still concerned about the conscience of the Corinthian believers but he now inserts a new concern into the argument – that of participating with demons. In line with Jewish belief Paul accepts that while idols are nothing of themselves, they do have demonic power behind them and that sacrificing an animal to the idol leads to participating (or sharing – the Greek being koinonia) with a demon. In the same way as Christians share with Jesus in the Eucharist, Paul says, or that Jews shared ‘in the altar’ as they sacrificed, so pagans share with the demons as they sacrifice to the idols. (Those who, with Zwingli, understand communion as merely a symbolic memorial of the crucifixion must surely interpret this passage consistent with their belief, which would make ‘sharing with demons’ a purely symbolic thing.) Again it has to be stressed that this is a reference to the sacrificing of animals and not just slaughtering them for human consumption.

In a very specific phrase in 10:21 Paul refers to ‘the table of demons’ comparing it to the ‘Lord’s table’ or communion table. Some believe that the ‘table of demons’ is a reference to the altars found in pagan temples and that, therefore, chapter 10 is specifically about having a meal in a pagan temple within the context of a worship service where an animal was sacrificed to the idol. Sharing in this type of context did present problems and could be harmful to the Christian. This is in contrast to buying meat in the market which had been sacrificed or going to someone’s house and eating meat there. In those contexts only conscience should dictate whether the meat is eaten or not. This presumably means that that meat has no danger attached to it.

Conclusion

Applying 1 Corinthians to today’s situation in the UK is problematic. As far as I am aware there are no pagan temples sacrificially slaughtering animals to their gods and the meat being sold on the open market in our country today. The detail of 1 Cor 8 and 10 is, therefore, not easy to apply. There are some principles that we should be applying, however – the main one being that while we are free to partake of activities that are not ‘Christian’, if by doing so we offend the conscience of fellow believers who are weaker in the faith we should desist from doing so. This is not because of the Law but out of love for our friends. Where there is no offence, there is no restriction. In applying these passages to the specifics of halal meat being sold in the UK the first question to be answered is whether the meat has been sacrificially killed or not. As far as I can see (and I would welcome an Islamic perspective on this) it is not the case. Rather, the meat is slaughtered for the sole purpose of being consumed by ordinary people. In this case the above passages are not relevant at all. If, on the other hand, the meat has an element of sacrifice about it then the principle referred to above comes into play.

This story in the Mail throws up a number of other issues that need addressing: the stirring up of anti-Muslim feeling and some Christians’ desire for the state to protect them being two important ones, but this post has been long enough as it is! All too often we see people reacting out of fear to such things rather than responding out of a place of confidence in Christ. Even in the face of immense provocation (and this, surely, is not an example) our greatest witness is to maintain our peace and joy. Jesus is Lord – whatever’s on the menu.

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