-- Aspiring to eat their snacks in line with their faith, Muslims in the northern Australian suburb of Fawkner are campaigning to persuade local restaurants to have halal food on their menus.
"Make Fawkner McDonalds Halal like the one in Roxbourgh Park or Brunswick," resident Amin Assafiri, a 28-year-old Muslim architect, writes in an online petition.
Amin has set up a Facebook page titled “Make Fawkner McDonalds’ halal!” to draw support for having halal restaurants in their suburb.
Muslim residents have also fielded an official request to McDonalds to comply with their request.
So far, the fast food giant has rejected the Muslim demand.
"(The Fawkner restaurant) will not be moving toward serving halal food,” McDonald’s spokeswoman Bronwyn Stubbs told the Moreland Leader Saturday, February 27.
“Members of the Fawkner community who wish to visit a halal restaurant have a number of McDonald’s in close proximity to choose from."
The concept of halal -- meaning permissible in Arabic -- has traditionally been applied to food.
Muslims should only eat meat from livestock slaughtered by a sharp knife from their necks, and the name of Allah, the Arabic word for God, must be mentioned.
Now other goods and services can also be certified as halal, including cosmetics, clothing, pharmaceuticals and financial services.
The global halal market is worth about 634 billion US dollars.
Growing Demand
Campaigners say that there are insufficient numbers of halal restaurants to meet the demands of Muslim residents.
"There are a lot of Muslims around Fawkner McDonalds," Assafiri writes.
Islam is Australia's second largest religion after Christianity.
Muslims, who have been in Australia for more than 200 years, make up 1.7 percent of its 20-million population.
The government recently issued an 88-page book that tells the success stories of more than 40 Muslims over the past three centuries.
Source: IslamOnline.net
