The Halal Advocates Featured in Book About Environmental Islam!

With Millions of Muslims in the United States having a typically America appetite for meat, it seems inevitable that Muslims will either have to interact with the larger food system or create their own to provide halal (permissible) food. To determine the status of the Halal industry, a group called the Halal Advocates of America was formed in 2008, led by American-born and South African-trained Mufti Shaykh Abdullah Nana, a young, bearded, slightly built, and calmly spolken scholar who resides in California. Shaykh Abdullah began learning about halal slaughtering by going to slaughter-houses with trained experts in South Africa. When he came back to the United States, he was concerned with the integrity of the halal standard and visited thirty-five slaughterhouses in over thirteen states. Since all of U.S. meat does not come from the United States, he also visited slaughterhouses in the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand. The point of his researce, he said, was that “there is a need for firsthand verification of halal practices.”

(Page 148, Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet)

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Book Description

“The Earth is a mosque”

Muslims are compelled by their religion to praise the Creator and to care for their community. But what is not widely known is that there are deep and long-standing connections between Islamic teachings and environmentalism. In this groundbreaking book, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin draws on research, scripture, and interviews with Muslim Americans to trace Islam’s preoccupation with humankind’s collective role as stewards of the Earth. Abdul-Matin points out that the Prophet Muhammad declared that “the Earth is a mosque.”

Deen means “path” or “way” in Arabic. Abdul-Matin offers dozens of examples of how Muslims can follow, and already are following, a Green Deen in four areas: “waste, watts (energy), water, and food.” At last, people of all beliefs can appreciate the gifts and contributions that Islam and Muslims bring to the environmental movement.

“Ibrahim Abdul-Matin not only shows the myriad ways American Muslims are contributing to the resolution of the environmental crisis that threatens us all but also goes a long way toward humanizing the Muslim community by sharing with the reader the lives of so many extraordinary, talented, and visionary people.”

—Imam Zaid Shakir, Zaytuna College, Berkeley, California