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Fischer begins with the observation that in the wake of Islamic
revivalism, halal (lawful or permitted) markets are expanding on a
global scale, and that London has emerged as a center for halal production,
trade, and consumption at a time when its meaning and
practices are being transformed and contested. He argues that in
the eyes of many Muslims in Britain, this proliferation of halal calls
attention to a form of impotent state secularism: the more the culture
of Islamic consumption asserts itself, the more the state's incapacity to define what is legitimate in the community's life is felt.
Discussing ethnographic material from fieldwork among Malay
Muslim migrants living in London, Fischer shows how halal evokes
a range of sensibilities, attitudes, assumptions, and behavior that
may support or undermine secularism as a political doctrine and
"the secular" as an epistemic category in everyday life. He shows
how Islamic organizations in Britain claim authority through halal
in the interfaces of expanding markets, secularism, and the rights
and demands of a growing group of Muslim consumers. These claims
emerge in a society where powerful political discourses identify the
veiling of Muslim women as an undesirable Islamic practice in public
life, whereas halal is undergoing a revolution in a discursive
vacuum.

In November 2005, the Halal Exhibition at the major World Food Market (WFM) in London was held for the first time. WFM also included an Ethnic Specialty Food Exhibition, as well as a Kosher Exhibition. In 2006, a delegation from the Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (MATRADE)1 had a booth at the Halal Exhibition. As we shall see, Malaysia holds a special position in the global halalmarket. In 2004 Malaysia launched its first Malaysia International Halal Showcase (MIHAS) in the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. The Malaysian prime minister, Abdullah Haji Ahmad Badawi, argued in his opening speech that establishing Malaysia as a "global halal hub" was a major priority of the government, and that MIHAS was the largest halal"trade expo" to be held anywhere in the world.

AbstractThis article starts with a sketch of the encounters and experiences of modern secularism in four areas of the Islamic world (Turkey, Arab world, South Asia and Southeast Asia); these point to the diverse conditions and constructions that have become central issues of regional and trans-regional discourse: laizism through reform, nationalism through decolonization, Islamic nationalism through state formation, and tolerance through traditional multi-ethnic environments. In analysing the basic writings of five exemplary modern Muslim thinkers, it is shown that modern Islamic thought, tied to the idea of mutual exclusive ideological constructions of secularism and Islamism, remains ambiguous while at the same time facing the factual unfolding of secularism in Muslim countries: the works of Mawdudi contain absolute denial of secularism; al-Qaradawi argues for the strict opposition and separation of the secular and the religious; al-Attas denies that Western processes of religious secularization are applicable to the development of Islam. On the other hand, Iqbal and Rahman, although maintaining a clear distinction between the secular and the religious, point to coinciding dimensions of religious and secular dimensions in modern political and social life. The reflection of the secular and the religious is highly shaped by historical and political influences as well as by ideologization, thus creating obstacles for fruitful conceptual reconstructions of the given dimensions of the coincidence of both — Islam and the secular conditions of modern society.

A three war culture war pits fundamentalist secularism against religions, christianity against a suspicious secularism, and Islam against secularism