On Saturday 27th April, members from the Halal Monitoring Committee (HMC) were honoured to host senior Ulama (Muslim Scholars) from the Tower Hamlets Bangladeshi Community in London.
The event was the first of many that HMC will be having with Muslim Scholars across the country, to provide updates and insights into the realities of the halal meat and poultry sectors and show real cases of halal food fraud taking place.
The HMC team visited a number of non-HMC certified stores within the London area and found a number of products that did not conform to the halal standard. The HMC team presented a short video to the scholars, who were very much alarmed and shocked to learn that such products were being sold within their community without any accountability at all.
Molana Yunus Dudhwala chair of HMC said:
“Alhamdulillah, many of the Ulama have gone away with lots and lots of information and lots of knowledge about HMC and the difference between certified halal and non-certified halal.”
Shaykh Imdadur Rahman Al-Madani who is the Imam & Khatib of Bromley By Bow Muslim centre said:
“Our message to our community is, we need to support the HMC, because these people are working hard to provide proper halal food. As a Muslim, this is our duty to support them…”
Molana Dr Shuyeb Ahmad Principal of Markazul Uloom London, reacting to the video we showed during the event, in which products that were plainly and simply haram were being sold as halal, said:
“It is sad for Muslims, and we must fear Allah (swt). The life of a Muslim is a temporary life, and we must fear the day of Judgement and our grave.
Consuming halal food is a religious obligation for all Muslims, but we still see food fraud taking place within our communities as the stores simply want to profit by using cheap products that do not meet the consumers expectations.
HMC will continue to campaign to educate and instil a level of transparency so that consumers can make informed choices when purchasing halal foods.
We thank all of the scholars that attended our event, and we hope that they can communicate what they have learnt to their communities.
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HMC is the UK’s largest Halal certifying body, employing over 220 people. Last month alone, HMC staff spent 12,000 hours to ensure your food is genuinely Halal with 13,000 visits made to outlets nationwide. It is a registered charity and also a not for profit organisation. It is overseen by a voluntary body, the National Executive Committee that consists of mainly scholars who are the Trustees of the organisation. HMC has been set up to work in the favour of all Muslims and the consumer at large. HMC aims to regulate and at every point inspect Halal products from source to the consumer. HMC is committed to serving the Muslims and the wider community and it intends to provide peace of mind and security where required.
