From Istanbul to Lagos: How Muslim Food Culture Is Travelling
The global Muslim community shares a prohibition on pork and alcohol, and otherwise eats extraordinarily differently. That diversity is a hidden richness.
The Islamic dietary laws — halal, the permitted, as opposed to haram, the forbidden — set certain limits: no pork, no blood, no alcohol, no meat slaughtered without the name of God. Within those limits, the Muslim world eats in almost every way imaginable. Turkish cuisine, Moroccan cuisine, South Asian cuisine, West African cuisine, Indonesian cuisine: these are not variations on a theme but distinct culinary traditions that happen to share certain prohibitions.
As Muslim communities have dispersed globally, their food cultures have travelled with them — and have begun to meet each other in new ways. A halal food festival in Birmingham might offer Egyptian koshari alongside Malaysian rendang alongside Nigerian egusi soup alongside Yemeni mandi. The encounter is not always harmonious, but it is always interesting, and it is producing new hybrid forms.
