I have heard that if an owner of a food establishment is Muslim, he or she does need to apply for a halal certificate from the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (http://www.muis.gov.sg/).
This is in contrast to a non-Muslim owner of a food establishment... He or she then has to apply for a halal certificate in order to claim to serve halal food.
I believe this operates on the assumption that Muslim owners understand how to prepare and serve halal food. However, i wonder if this assumption still applies...
In this age of GM food, and the use of much preservatives in cooking, I wonder if some Muslim owners are able to tell the difference between what is permissible or not...
If the above is at all true, this opens up the possibility of non-Muslim owners preparing food which is more halal than the Muslim owners - apparently due to the more stringent criteria laid out by MUIS for the former...
hmmm....
perhaps, at the bottom of this lies the fact that we still assume that the Muslim community in Singapore is a homogenous one, in terms of consciousness and practise of religious laws, and access to knowledge in general... is this true?
acknowledging this would be opening a can of worms... yet, we've already managed to tackle something similar with our approach towards combating extremist values post-JI...
more hmmm....
cheers!
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