Omarah - The Halal Journey

12/10/2026

THE NEED FOR UPDATING HALAL STANDARDS IN RESPONSE TO FOOD INNOVATION AND BIOTECHNOLOGY

1. Halal certification has long rested on a relatively stable technical vocabulary: identifiable animal sources, traceable slaughter methods, and a finite list of additives whose provenance auditors could verify by paper trail or laboratory assay. That stability is now being tested. Cultivated meat grown in bioreactors, edited crops and microbes, precision fermented proteins, and AI assisted ingredient screening are entering food systems faster than the standards meant to govern them can be revised. For halal authorities JAKIM in Malaysia, the Standards and Metrology Institute for Islamic Countries ( ) at the level, and national bodies across Muslim-majority markets the question is no longer whether novel food technologies will reach shelves, but whether the regulatory architecture can keep pace without compromising shariah integrity or consumer trust.

2. The clearest test case is cultivated meat. In May 2025, 230 scholars at the 26th International Islamic Fiqh Academy ( ) conference in Doha ruled that cultivated meat may be halal, provided the originating cell line is sourced from an animal slaughtered according to shariah, the growth medium is free of prohibited substances such as fetal bovine serum, and the final product undergoes transparent labelling and safety verification. This followed an earlier 2023 scholarly opinion that reached similar conclusions for Meat's cultivated chicken. Yet a recent perspective article in Foods notes that implementation remains fragmented: Saudi Arabia's regulators have not yet issued any halal authorisation for cultivated meat, and the authors call for a multi level, stage gated governance framework together with pilot halal compliant cell banks jointly overseen by technical and religious authorities. A fatwa establishes permissibility in principle; it does not, on its own, give certifying bodies an auditable protocol for verifying cell line provenance or culture medium composition at industrial scale.

3. Genetic modification presents a parallel, longer running challenge. A 2025 critical review in journals observes that derived enzymes and recombinant insulin produced via genetically engineered microorganisms have already received halal certification in Malaysia and Indonesia, demonstrating that biotechnology products can clear shariah review when sourcing and process documentation are sound but the same review warns that the absence of a harmonized global consensus on GMO halal status continues to produce market segmentation and consumer confusion, particularly where gene donors or culture media trace back to haram sources. The underlying difficulty is structural: shariah compliance in biotechnology hinges on traceability of a biological pathway, not merely a finished product's composition, and most existing halal standards were not written with recombinant processes in mind.

4. Standard-setting bodies are responding, if unevenly. 's 2025 World Halal Standards Day, held under the theme "Innovating Halal: Embracing Food Tech and Sustainability," placed novel protein sources including lab grown meat explicitly on its technical agenda, with SMIIC specialists presenting ongoing studies on emerging food sources and reaffirming that harmonized OIC/SMIIC standards reduce the need for repeated national certification. In November 2025, SMIIC's General Assembly in Tashkent signalled new standards in development covering halal inspection, pharmaceuticals, and animal feeding, alongside the organisation's existing OIC/SMIIC 1 (general food requirements) and OIC/SMIIC 22 (edible gelatine) standards. Malaysia's JAKIM has taken a parallel track, convening the Global Halal Summit 2026 around "contemporary fiqh issues, novel food technologies, and global regulatory standardisation," and publicly committing to a forthcoming International Halal Innovation and Technology Centre to house guidance on emerging slaughter and production technologies.

5. Detection technology is advancing alongside production technology, and this is arguably where the more immediate standards gap lies. A 2025 review in Food Biomacromolecules catalogues an expanding toolkit for halal authentication biosensors capable of detecting porcine DNA at concentrations as low as 1% with over 90% accuracy, electronic nose systems combined with GC-MS for adulterant screening, and deep learning classifiers such as "HalalNet," which reportedly achieved 98.1% accuracy in distinguishing halal from non-halal meat samples. JAKIM itself has confirmed it is developing an AI system to screen ingredient lists a necessity given that a single hotel menu audit can involve thousands of ingredient entries while exploring blockchain for immutable supply chain verification. These tools strengthen enforcement, but they also outstrip the written standards that are supposed to define what, exactly, a biosensor or an algorithm should be certifying against when the substrate itself is a cultured cell line or a gene-edited enzyme rather than a conventional ingredient.

6. For Malaysian halal food SMEs, this is not an abstract regulatory debate; it is a looming compliance and export readiness issue. Firms that have invested in JAKIM certification under the current Malaysian Standard framework may find themselves recertifying, or facing new documentation burdens, as novel ingredients and processing aids enter their supply chains a dynamic entirely consistent with the capability and institutional support gaps already documented in the halal SME export readiness literature. Firms with weaker technology and innovation capabilities, or that rely heavily on government incentive schemes to absorb certification costs, are likely to be disproportionately exposed if standards update faster than support mechanisms do. Conversely, early movers who build internal expertise in traceability documentation the same evidentiary discipline that cultivated-meat and GMO certification now demand stand to gain a credibility advantage in both domestic and export markets, where halal integrity verification is increasingly a condition of market access rather than a marketing asset.

7. The path forward is not a single sweeping standard but a layered one. JAKIM and SMIIC appear to be converging on this already: retain the existing shariah principles lawful source, humane and compliant slaughter where applicable, absence of najs contamination, process transparency while building technology specific annexes that translate those principles into testable criteria for cultivated cell lines, gene edited organisms, and precision fermented ingredients. The IIFA's 2025 ruling and SMIIC's 2025–2026 standards agenda suggest the religious and institutional will exists; what remains is the harder technical work of writing verification protocols, accrediting testing laboratories for novel substrates, and training auditors who can evaluate a bioreactor process as rigorously as they currently evaluate an abattoir. Until that work closes the gap, halal certification risks a credibility lag precisely at the moment the global halal food economy valued in the trillions and expanding into biotechnology adjacent categories most needs consumers to trust that the label still means what it has always meant.

References:

Ahmad, A. M., Sipra, H. M., Tanveer, N., Aslam, N., Hassan, A., & Hassan, S. A. (2025). Ensuring halal food integrity: An overview of modern molecular and technological solutions. Food Biomacromolecules, 2, 5-22. https://doi.org/10.1002/fob2.12022

Alqurashi, R. M., Sikora, D., Rzymski, P., & Poniedziałek, B. (2026). Cultured meat and its acceptability in Muslim societies: A narrative perspective on halal perspectives and regulatory challenges. Foods, 15(8),1288. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods15081288

BusinessToday. (2026). Malaysia takes on new halal frontiers from cultured meat to agentic AI. https://www.businesstoday.com.my/2026/08/24/malaysia-takes-on-new-halal-frontiers-from-cultured-meat-to-agentic-ai/

Green Queen (2025). Leading Islamic authority approves consumption of cultivated meat for Muslims. Green Queen. https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-islam-can-muslims-eat-halal-ruling/

Herdiana, Y. (2025). Halal challenges and health risks in genetically modified organisms (GMOs): A critical approach. Cogent Food & Agriculture, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311932.2025.2565716

The Sun Malaysia. (2026). JAKIM developing AI system to simplify halal certification approval. https://thesun.my/news/malaysia-news/jakim-developing-ai-system-to-simplify-halal-certification-approval-oa11998574/

Vegconomist. (2023). Islamic scholars declare that cultivated meat can be halal. https://vegconomist.com/cultivated-cell-cultured-biotechnology/cultivated-meat/islamic-scholars-cultivated-meat-can-be-halal/

Food authenticity is crucial for ensuring consumer trust, public health and market integrity with particular importance in the context of religious and cultural practices. For the global Muslim popul...

08/10/2026

THE ROLE OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY IN HALAL SUPPLY CHAIN TRACEABILITY

1. For an industry built on trust, the halal economy has long carried an uncomfortable irony: its integrity still rests largely on paper certificates, centralized databases, and the honesty of whichever actor happens to be holding the product at a given point in the chain. As the global halal market pushes toward $7 trillion, this reliance on fragmented, opaque record-keeping has become harder to defend. Consumers no longer simply want a logo on the packaging; they want to know, with some degree of verifiable certainty, that the chicken on their plate or the lipstick in their bag has remained halal at every single handoff farm, abattoir, processor, logistics provider, retailer. It is precisely this gap between consumer expectation and institutional capability that blockchain technology has been proposed to close.

2. The appeal of blockchain in this context is not abstract. A distributed, tamper evident ledger means that once a transaction a slaughter record, a certification stamp, a temperature log during transport is written to the chain, it cannot be quietly altered or deleted by any single party downstream. Recent scholarship frames this precisely as the core value proposition: blockchain shifts halal assurance from a centralized, document-based model vulnerable to fraud and data loss, toward a decentralized architecture where every stakeholder sees the same immutable history of the product. A 2025 study out of Universitas Muhammadiyah Prof. Dr. Hamka went further, designing and testing " ," a permissioned-blockchain framework that encodes halal certification rules as executable smart contract logic and records every custody transfer on a shared ledger demonstrating not just conceptual promise but a working reference architecture with measurable gains in traceability completeness and tamper evidence.

3. This is not merely an academic exercise confined to journal pages. Malaysia, which operates arguably the world's most recognized halal certification regime through JAKIM, has been explicit about moving in this direction. In parliamentary remarks this year, the Minister in the Prime Minister's Department overseeing religious affairs stated plainly that blockchain ensures every stage of the halal supply chain is recorded and verified transparently, in a manner that cannot be altered language that signals a shift from blockchain as pilot to blockchain as policy direction for monitoring Foreign Halal Certification Bodies. JAKIM's broader five-strategy roadmap, first articulated at the 2023 Global Halal Summit and reiterated since, names blockchain explicitly as the mechanism for supply chain transparency and consumer education on halal status. The Halal Development Corporation's own Halal Digital Ecosystem initiative, and earlier blockchain registries piloted with Malaysian cosmetics and food , reflect the same ambition translated into early commercial deployment.

4. Where the research becomes genuinely useful for practitioners is in its recognition that blockchain is rarely sufficient on its own. The strongest recent contributions pair it with complementary technologies. One 2024 study proposed combining blockchain with artificial intelligence specifically to strengthen halal food traceability, using AI to validate and flag anomalies in the data before it is committed to the ledger addressing a frequently raised criticism that blockchain guarantees the immutability of records but not the truthfulness of what is entered at the point of origin. Similarly, a study on halal meat supply chains proposed embedding Islamic dietary law requirements directly into food safety protocols, layered with blockchain and sensors, to create real time, risk based tracing rather than static after the fact certification For meat and poultry specifically, where the moment of slaughter and subsequent cold chain handling are the points of greatest halal risk, this convergence of IoT sensing with blockchain recording is arguably more operationally significant than blockchain alone.

5. The risk-management dimension deserves particular attention for a Malaysian SME audience. A 2025 study from Universiti Teknologi MARA developed a "Blockchain Driven Supply Chain Risk Management Model" tailored to Malaysia's halal sectors food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, modest fashion, and tourism and found that consortium blockchain architectures (where a defined group of trusted stakeholders, rather than the public at large, validate transactions) offered the most practical balance between transparency and the confidentiality concerns of competing businesses sharing a ledger. This is a meaningful nuance: full public blockchains raise data-sensitivity objections from SMEs wary of exposing supplier relationships or cost structures, whereas permissioned or consortium models, as also used in the Halal Chain framework, appear better suited to the realities of fragmented, trust-sensitive halal supply networks.

6. It would be incomplete to present blockchain adoption as a settled success story. The literature is consistent in flagging that implementation remains uneven and that technology alone cannot substitute for governance. A systematic review spanning Islamic finance, blockchain, and considerations across halal supply chain ecosystems from 2015 to 2025 found that while blockchain's role in enabling immutable, real time transparency is well established conceptually, genuinely integrated deployments linking certification bodies, financiers, logistics providers, and regulators on one interoperable system remain the exception rather than the norm. The Indonesian Journal of Halal Studies likewise notes that most halal traceability systems today are still highly centralized and fragmented, with blockchain integration described as an emerging rather than default governance layer. Cost of implementation, interoperability between competing blockchain platforms, digital literacy gaps among smallholder and SME suppliers, and the absence of unified data standards across jurisdictions all remain genuine barriers.

7. For halal industry practitioners and policymakers, the practical takeaway is less about whether to adopt blockchain and more about how. The evidence increasingly favours permissioned or consortium architectures over fully public ledgers, layered with complementary technologies AI for data validation, IoT for real time sensing rather than blockchain deployed in isolation as a standalone traceability silo. Malaysia's own trajectory, from JAKIM's public commitments to 's digital ecosystem pilots, suggests that national level coordination, rather than fragmented SME by SME adoption, will likely determine how quickly these systems move from promising pilots to industry wide infrastructure.

8. What is clear, across both the academic and policy literature surveyed here, is that blockchain is no longer being discussed as a speculative technology for halal supply chains it is being actively designed, piloted, and in Malaysia's case, written into regulatory strategy. The open question for the coming years is not whether blockchain belongs in halal traceability, but which governance model, which complementary technologies, and which level of state coordination will allow it to scale beyond pilot programs into the backbone of a multi trillion-dollar global industry's trust infrastructure.

References:

Alourani, A., & Khan, S. (2024). A blockchain and artificial intelligence-based system for halal food traceability. https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.07305v1

Arief, H., Abidin, Z., & Sifaudin, W. (2026). Integrating Islamic Finance, Blockchain, and ESG: A Systematic Literature Review of the Halal Supply Chain Ecosystem. LAA MAISYIR: Jurnal Ekonomi Islam, 13(1), 202-216. https://journal.uin-alauddin.ac.id/index.php/lamaisyir/article/download/66216/25790/224884

Bernama. (2025). JAKIM reviews FHCB recognition procedures to align with global halal standards. https://bernama.com/misc/rss/news.php?id=2399142

Fitriani, N. N., & Eliza, Z. (2025). Review article: Blockchain as an innovative solution for halal verification of food products in global supply chains. Journal of Halal Science and Research, 6(2), 186-196. https://doi.org/10.12928/jhsr.v6i2.12022

Halal Focus. (2019). Malaysia cosmetics firm among first to join global halal blockchain registry. https://halalfocus.com/malaysia-cosmetics-firm-among-first-to-join-global-halal-blockchain-registry/

Halal Focus. (2023). Malaysia: Jakim adopts strategies to bolster halal certification. https://halalfocus.com/malaysia-jakim-adopts-strategies-to-bolster-halal-certification/

Hassam, S. F. (2025). Optimising Halal supply chain with blockchain-driven risk management. FBM Insights, 11, 23-26. https://ir.uitm.edu.my/id/eprint/141731/

Himah Naely Rahmah, H. N. (2026). Exploring the role of blockchain technology in building transparency and traceability in the halal food supply chain. Indonesian Journal of Halal Studies, 3(1), 1-12. https://ejournal.uinsalatiga.ac.id/index.php/ijhs/article/download/5683/1445/26219

28/09/2026

THE ROLE OF DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND AI-POWERED TRAVEL APPS IN SHAPING THE MUSLIM TOURIST EXPERIENCE

1. The global travel economy has quietly crossed a threshold. What was once framed as a niche, faith-based segment of the tourism industry is now a mainstream growth engine, with international Muslim arrivals projected to reach 208 million in 2026 and climb toward 262 million by 2030, commanding an estimated annual spend of USD 310 billion. What is changing just as fast as the numbers, however, is how this journey is being planned, verified, and experienced. According to the newly released Global Muslim Travel Index (GMTI) 2026, four out of five Muslim travellers now use tools at some point in their travel decision making to discover destinations, locate halal dining, identify prayer facilities, compare transport options, and receive personalised recommendations. For an industry historically built on trust intermediated by human networks, family referrals, and formal certification marks, this is nothing short of a structural shift in how confidence is built and transferred.

2. Across the traveller journey planning, staying, and post trip evaluation AI is increasingly functioning less as a convenience layer and more as a decision support system. Recent scholarship frames this progression clearly: AI powered recommendation engines, interactive travel assistants, and predictive itinerary tools are becoming embedded at each phase of the Muslim tourist journey, from pre-trip destination screening to real time in destination navigation. This is consistent with 2026's expanded framework (Access, Communications, Environment, Services), which for the first-time places explicit weight on AI readiness, digital visibility, and smart destination infrastructure alongside the traditional pillars of halal friendly tourism assessment. In practice, this means a destination's physical halal ecosystem its restaurants, prayer rooms, and Muslim friendly hotels now matters only insofar as it is digitally discoverable and machine readable.

3. Yet convenience and trust are not the same thing, and this distinction sits at the heart of the current academic and industry debate. A 2026 study from International University, built around a proposed framework for AI enabled consumer trust in halal tourism, identifies verification of status, accuracy of prayer facility data, multilingual support, and responsible handling of personal data as the decisive variables shaping whether Muslim travellers actually rely on AI recommendations rather than merely consulting them. The researchers are careful to note that technology alone does not resolve the trust deficit; an AI system is only as credible as the values and governance embedded in its design. This nuance is frequently lost in consumer-facing coverage, which tends to celebrate adoption statistics while glossing over a more uncomfortable question raised in the wider press: when an app confidently recommends a "halal friendly" restaurant based on crowd sourced reviews and photographs rather than verified certification, is that recommendation actually reliable?

4. This is precisely where the interface between AI powered travel platforms and halal assurance systems becomes critical and where, in my own consulting and auditing work, I see the greatest gap between technological ambition and operational reality. An AI travel assistant can only be as trustworthy as the certification data feeding it. Emerging scholarship on "digital halal" reframes certification itself as a socio technical ecosystem, arguing that traditional audit-based approaches are no longer sufficient on their own to guarantee integrity across increasingly complex, cross border halal supply and service chains, and must be jointly optimised with digital governance mechanisms. Complementary technical work on blockchain enabled verifiable credentials proposes decentralised ledger architectures that would allow halal certification status to be validated in real time within mobile and web applications, extending interoperability across halal e-commerce, fintech, and tourism "super apps" rather than leaving each platform to interpret certification independently. For travel app developers and destination marketers, the implication is unambiguous: halal assurance infrastructure needs to be architected as a live, query able data layer, not a static logo scanned once at the point of certification.

5. The competitive stakes of getting this right are now visible at the destination level. GMTI 2026 introduces a new "Destination Activation Stack," layering discoverability, responsible experience design, and trust signalling frameworks on top of baseline readiness an acknowledgment that destinations able to activate their Muslim friendly credentials digitally are pulling ahead of those that merely possess them physically. has held the top overall ranking for an eleventh consecutive year, while , , and now share second place, and the has climbed to sixth globally on the strength of a perfect score for halal dining and prayer facility availability, reinforced by targeted AI readiness investment. in particular has emerged as the leading operational corridor for Muslim travellers in 2026, buoyed by air connectivity, established halal ecosystems, and increasingly digital infrastructure maturity. The report's central warning deserves emphasis: destinations that fail to digitise and structure their Muslim friendly offerings risk exclusion from AI driven recommendation systems altogether, irrespective of how strong their underlying physical infrastructure may be.

6. None of this progress is evenly distributed, and practitioners should resist treating AI adoption as a solved problem. Conference based research from Indonesia home to the world's largest Muslim population finds that while AI integration is strengthening trust infrastructure, certification scalability, and the visibility of micro and small halal tourism enterprises, meaningful barriers persist in digital literacy, infrastructure disparity across regions, and regulatory readiness at the policy level. The researchers call for a dedicated Halal AI Governance Framework to guide ethical, equitable, and sustainable adoption rather than leaving it to market forces alone. This is a caution I would extend from personal audit experience: an AI recommendation engine trained on incomplete or poorly maintained certification datasets does not merely fail to help small and micro halal operators it can actively erase them from traveller consideration, entrenching the digital advantage of larger, better resourced players.

7. For destination marketing organisations, halal certification bodies, and tourism operators, the strategic response should not be to bolt AI features onto existing platforms, but to treat digital trust infrastructure as core to halal assurance system design from the outset. That means structured, machine readable certification data; APIs that allow verified halal and prayer facility information to be pulled directly by third party travel platforms rather than scraped or guessed; sustained investment in digital literacy for micro and small halal enterprises; and governance frameworks that keep human religious authority not algorithmic confidence scores as the final arbiter of what counts as halal. Handled this way, AI powered platforms need not dilute the integrity of halal assurance; used well, they can extend it further, faster, and more transparently than audit cycles alone ever could. The destinations and operators that internalise this now will define what Muslim friendly tourism looks like for the next decade and those that treat digitisation as an afterthought may simply become invisible to the travellers they are trying to serve.

Reference:

Ansarullah, S. I., ul Islam, M. I., Sumaya Iqbal, Ikhlaq, S., & Yousuf, T. (2026). Artificial Intelligence Applications in Halal Tourism: Enhancing Muslim Traveler Experiences. Halal Tourism and Artificial Intelligence: New Approaches for a New Generation. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80686-165-120261010

Free Malaysia Today. (2026, June 22). Can you depend on AI to plan a Muslim-friendly trip? Retrieved from https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/leisure/2026/06/22/can-you-depend-on-ai-to-plan-a-muslim-friendly-trip

Marketech APAC. (2026). 80% of Muslim Travellers Now Use AI Tools as Digital Trust Reshapes Travel Planning: Report. Retrieved from https://marketech-apac.com/80-of-muslim-travellers-now-use-ai-tools-as-digital-trust-reshapes-travel-planning-report/

Mastercard & CrescentRating. (2026a). Mastercard and CrescentRating's Global Muslim Travel Index 2026 Reveals 80% Of Travelers Now Use AI Tools as Muslim Travel Enters the Era of Digital Trust. Mastercard Newsroom. Retrieved from https://www.mastercard.com/news/ap/en/newsroom/press-releases/en/2026/mastercard-and-crescentrating-s-global-muslim-travel-index-2026-reveals-80-of-travelers-now-use-ai-tools-as-muslim-travel-enters-the-era-of-digital-trust/

Mastercard & CrescentRating. (2026b). Bahrain and Jordan among world's top 15 Muslim-friendly destinations, according to Mastercard and CrescentRating's Global Muslim Travel Index 2026. Mastercard Newsroom. Retrieved from https://www.mastercard.com/news/eemea/en/newsroom/press-releases/en/2026/august/bahrain-and-jordan-among-world-s-top-15-muslim-friendly-destinations-according-to-mastercard-and-crescentrating-s-global-muslim-travel-index-2026/

New INTI. (2026, May 28). Can Muslim travellers trust AI to plan their trips? INTI International University. Retrieved from https://newinti.edu.my/can-muslim-travellers-trust-ai-to-plan-their-trips/

Zhang, Y., Mohd Balwi, M. A. W. F., Mansor, F., Yao, Y., & Cao, Y. (2026;), From molecular truth to systemic trust: A socio-technical mapping of digital halal research. British Food Journal. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-10-2025-1440

21/09/2026

THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE PROTEINS:
NAVIGATING HALAL PERMISSIBILITY FOR PLANT-BASED, CULTURED MEAT, AND INSECT DERIVED INGREDIENTS

1. The global protein economy is undergoing its most significant transformation since the advent of industrial livestock farming. A population heading toward nearly ten billion by mid-century, combined with intensifying scrutiny of conventional meat's environmental burden, has pushed plant-based analogues, cultured (cultivated) meat, and insect derived ingredients out of pilot facilities and into mainstream food security strategy. For an industry serving close to two billion consumers, whose combined halal food and beverage expenditure is forecast to climb from roughly US$1.3 trillion in 2026 to US$1.8 trillion by 2030, the operative question is no longer whether these alternative proteins will enter halal supply chains, but under what jurisprudential conditions they may legitimately do so. Unlike conventional meat, where (ritual slaughter) offers a settled reference point, these novel categories sit at the confluence of biotechnology, entomology, and classical Islamic jurisprudence compelling scholars, regulators, and manufacturers to reason by analogy into territory the founding jurists never anticipated. This newsletter maps the current state of halal reasoning across the three-principal alternative-protein categories and what it means for compliance strategy going forward.

2. Any rigorous halal assessment of these technologies must begin with first principles rather than ingredient checklists. Islamic dietary law operates on a presumption of permissibility: all food is lawful by default unless a specific prohibition applies on grounds of impurity ( ), intoxication, or classification among the 'ith things intrinsically harmful or repugnant. The 'anic standard of 3halalan folds wholesomeness and safety directly into the permissibility test itself, rather than treating them as separate concerns. Two further juristic tools recur throughout the alternative-protein debate: , the principle that a substance's ruling may change once its essential nature is transformed through processing, and qiyas, analogical reasoning from an established case to a novel one such as extending the Prophetic-era permissibility of locusts to other insect species. These instruments give contemporary scholars the interpretive room to evaluate technologies unknown to classical , but they equally explain why rulings on cultured meat and insects remain fluid, provisional, and in places contested across jurisdictions.

3. Plant-based meat analogues occupy the least contentious position of the three categories, since their base matrices soy, pea, wheat, and mycoprotein are inherently halal. The real compliance risk migrates downstream, into the additives and processing chain that give these products their meat like taste, texture, and juiciness. Flavour systems frequently rely on alcohol-based carriers or animal derived enzymes; binders and emulsifiers may trace back to or non-halal fats; and shared manufacturing lines create genuine cross-contamination exposure with non-halal products. Halal certification of plant-based meat therefore cannot stop at the primary ingredient list it must extend to processing aids, extraction solvents, and equipment sanitation protocols, verified at a molecular rather than a label level. Malaysia's own ecosystem is instructive here: ventures such as the International–Megmilk Snow Brand pulse protein isolate facility show how alternative-protein manufacturing can be engineered for halal compliance from the design stage, rather than retrofitted after the fact.

4. Cultivated meat presents a genuinely novel jurisprudential question, and 2025 marked its most consequential milestone yet. At its 26th session in in May 2025, the International Islamic Fiqh Academy ( ) operating under the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation with scholars from more than sixty countries issued Resolution No. 265, affirming that cultivated meat is permissible for Muslims provided four conditions are met: cells must originate from animals lawful to eat and properly slaughtered; the growth medium must exclude prohibited substances such as blood or foetal bovine serum; production must follow verified regulatory oversight; and consumers must be given full transparency on the manufacturing process. This was the third such ruling within three years, following 's Islamic Religious Council ( ) and the Muslim Federation in 2024, and a panel of Saudi scholars who advised the cultivated chicken producer Good Meat in 2023. Consensus, however, remains incomplete. Some fatwa positions still insist on a slaughter anchor for any land-animal cell source, treating cells drawn from a living animal as failing that condition altogether, while Malaysia's own Muftis and fatwa committees have signalled a cautious, still evaluating posture rather than issuing a final national ruling. Given that an industry survey found 87 percent of cultivated-meat companies already treat halal compliance as a strategic priority, this jurisprudential gap functions as much as a market-access barrier as a theological one.

5. Insect derived protein is the most divided of the three categories, and the division runs along genuinely different lines of classical reasoning rather than mere regulatory lag. The locust holds unambiguous status: it is explicitly permitted in hadith and was consumed by the and his companions, making it the anchor case for all subsequent analogical reasoning on entomophagy. Beyond the locust, opinion splits sharply. The Hanafi school has historically classified insects generally as 'ith and therefore impermissible, while other scholars argue this classification reflects cultural aversion rather than binding textual evidence, opening space for conditional permissibility. Regulatory practice mirrors this divide: Singapore's MUIS approved sixteen insect species for consumption in 2024, citing the default presumption of permissibility alongside an earlier 2009 fatwa on cochineal derived colouring, whereas Gulf Cooperation Council authorities remain considerably more conservative, restricting approval largely to locusts. Recent scholarship increasingly frames the question through al-shariah the higher objectives of Islamic law around sustainability and welfare and through istihalah, asking whether processed insect derivatives such as protein isolates might warrant a different ruling than whole insects. Until a body with the standing of the IIFA weighs in as it did for cultivated meat, insect protein will likely remain the category with the widest certification variance across markets.

6. These jurisprudential debates are unfolding against a backdrop of accelerating commercial convergence. Global halal food and beverage spending is forecast to grow at a 6.9 percent compound annual rate between 2026 and 2030, with alternative protein products increasingly cited by market analysts as a defining growth trend within that expansion. Malaysia's JAKIM continues to function as the de facto global benchmark for certification rigour, its framework increasingly referenced within aligned standards and mutual recognition agreements that extend Malaysian halal assurance into more than sixty countries. Yet fragmentation remains the industry's persistent structural weakness: certification bodies across Southeast Asia, the Gulf, and Western markets continue to apply materially different thresholds to the same alternative protein technologies, raising compliance costs and slowing cross-border market entry precisely as demand accelerates.

7. For halal assurance professionals, auditors, and manufacturers, the practical implication is unambiguous: alternative proteins cannot be certified through legacy meat-based audit frameworks alone. Cultured meat demands traceability protocols documenting cell line provenance and growth medium composition with the same rigour once reserved for slaughter certificates. Plant-based products require molecular level verification of flavour carriers, enzymes, and shared line sanitation rather than reliance on ingredient labels alone. Insect derived ingredients demand jurisdiction specific compliance mapping, given the wide variance between permissive and conservative fatwa environments. Forward looking certifiers are already building "discovery dossiers" comprehensive process documentation submitted proactively to fiqh authorities to secure jurisprudential clarity before, rather than after, market launch. This anticipatory posture, rather than retrospective compliance, is likely to separate credible halal alternative-protein brands from those exposed to reputational and regulatory risk.

8. The path is unmistakable: alternative proteins are moving from the periphery of the halal industry toward its innovation frontier, and the jurisprudential infrastructure is, for the first time, beginning to catch up. The IIFA's 2025 ruling on cultivated meat demonstrates that transnational Islamic scholarship can respond decisively to novel food technology when scientific evidence and industry engagement are sufficiently strong a template that insect-based protein has yet to receive. What remains is the harder work of harmonisation: aligning certification standards across , MUIS, authorities, and emerging Western halal bodies, so that a product deemed halal in is not contested in or . For an industry whose entire commercial credibility rests on consumer trust, that convergence more than any single fatwa will determine whether alternative proteins become genuinely mainstream within the global halal food system: no longer "alternative" at all.

References:

AHF Halal Foundation. (2024). Rise of Plant-Based and Clean-Label Halal Food Products. Retrieved from https://halalfoundation.org/rise-of-plant-based-and-clean-label-halal-food-products/

AHF Halal Foundation. (2026). Is Lab-Grown (Cell-Cultured) Meat Halal? An Authoritative Guide. Retrieved from https://halalfoundation.org/are-cell-cultured-lab-grown-meats-halal-an-authoritative-guide/

Aslam, S., & Abbasi, E. (2025). Sustainable protein for the halal market: Economic feasibility and regulatory pathways for edible insects in Muslim-majority economies. Journal of Insects as Food and Feed, 12(7), 1149-1165. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/23524588-bja10331

Bisht, A., Murugan, G., Hussain, M., & Abdi. G. (2025). Current advancements in alternative protein sources: Plant-based, cultured meat, and insect proteins for a sustainable future. Food Bioscience, 73, Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fbio.2025.107708

Green Queen. (2025, June). Leading Islamic Authority Approves Consumption of Cultivated Meat for Muslims. Retrieved from https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-islam-can-muslims-eat-halal-ruling/

Halalification. (2025). Halal Standards for Plant-Based Meats. Retrieved from https://halalification.com/knowledge-base/food-beverages/ethics-culture-religious-beliefs/is-halal-only-about-slaughter-and-meat/does-halal-certification-include-plant-based-meats/

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