A group of Christian churches has launched a vigorous anti-halaal campaign, reports Jan Raath in Harare
A POWERFUL right-wing Christian fundamentalist group in Zimbabwe has launched a campaign against the country’s modest Muslim community to halt what it believes is a “dangerous and violent” religion with its eyes on taking over the government on its way to blanketing the entire continent under the star-and-crescent moon.
The Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe (EFZ), a collection of several “born-again” churches, including the wealthy Rhema Bible Church, and which claims to have three million members in Zimbabwe, is organising boycotts of fast-food chains and chicken and beef suppliers whose products are certified halaal.
It has also been making direct contact with senior politicians in the ruling Zanu-PF party in an attempt to counter what the group feels is a perilous new cosiness with Muslim countries like Iran and Malaysia.
The group’s anti-Islamic drive has serious implications for the country’s burgeoning beef and chicken exports, and threatens jobs in the livestock industry.
“We know the Muslims have hidden agendas,” said Felix Mukonowengwe, national co-ordinator of the EFZ’s halaal boycott campaign. “It is to form an Islamic party, and to change the government. One day, we know, these guys will rule.”
A pamphlet, produced by the EFZ’s “Operation Mobilisation”, urges Christians to pray for “those who are ignorantly being drawn into Islam”, including members of the government.
But in a letter to fast-food chains Nando’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken, and to the Cold Storage Company (CSC), the huge state-owned beef marketing operation, and the country’s main chicken producers, the language is less conciliatory.
“Unless yourselves stop supplying only halaal meat products … we shall actively mobilise Zimbabweans to boycott your meat products,” threatens the letter.
For 20 years most Zimbabweans have been eating halaal beef. Every cow passing through the killing box at the CSC’s abattoirs, after being stunned with a steel bolt rammed against the temple, has had its throat slit almost from ear to ear by a Muslim slaughterer, who utters, “In the name of Allah the creator, Allah is the greatest.”
Every couple of months, Imaam Achmat Elmie travels around the CSC’s abattoirs to ensure the technique is adhered to. The method of killing is accepted as humane by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: it ensures rapid bleeding and is common practice in non-Muslim abattoirs all over the world.
In 1976, when the CSC started selling sanctions-busting beef to the Muslim countries of West and North Africa, it asked the Council of Islamic Scholars here to certify the beef halaal.
After independence, when the CSC began exporting to the European Union, every box was stamped “certified halaal”. In recent years, the main chicken producers followed suit.
But in November last year, the 300 pastors at the EFZ’s annual meeting took a hard look at the “dangers of Islam” and, particularly, at halaal.
‘In a method similar to witchcraft, the Muslims believe that by coercing people to eat halaal food, they are submitting to Allah and to Shariah law. In this they are becoming Muslims,” says the Operation Mobilisation document.
Faced with the threat of a boycott, the CSC immediately buckled under and stopped the halaal practice at all but two of its abattoirs, hoping to be able to use the remaining two for exports to Malaysia and for the local Muslim community.
Fearful of contamination of halaal with non-halaal carcasses and in response to the CSC’s abandonment of the 20-year-old agreement, the Council of Scholars withdrew its certification, and signs went up in the mosques, warning that the CSC label was no longer a guarantee of halaal beef.
CSC general manager Lawrence Masanga insists that the beef from the two abattoirs is halaal, and Malaysian High Commissioner V Yoogalingam believes the arrangement is acceptable.
But Imaam Elmie is not overseeing it and, the council points out, if it is not certifying, it doesn’t know who is.
Nando’s, which sells about 40 000 birds in Zimbabwe a month, immediately passed the buck to the chicken producers. When the boycott began, Tineyi Mawocha, Nando’s managing director in Zimbabwe, said: “We felt the pinch. It’s not good. I just want to maximise sales.”
The EFZ had less success with the chicken producers. None of the companies, nor the Poultry Producers’ Association, turned up for any meetings called by the EFZ.
Ismail Adam, the secretary of the Harare Muslim Cultural Institute, says the community is deeply upset. “All these years we have tolerated one another. There has never been any conflict [between Christians and Muslims].”
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