Living Our Beliefs: Exploring Faith & Religion in Daily Life

Let's Eat Halal: Food By Muslims for Everyone – Shahed Amanullah

• Meli Solomon, the Talking with God Project • Season 4 • Episode 89

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Episode 89.  

Every culture has its food, and in America, each immigrant group has contributed to the bounty of culinary options––from Italian pizza to Jewish delis and much more. Muslims are no different. What this group has brought, however, is a wide array of foods, since Muslims hail from many countries. My guest today, Shahed Amanullah, a renowned entrepreneur, created a short list of restaurants that offered halal food in 1998. What began as a simple list for himself and his Muslim friends, has grown into a juggernaut. Now an app called Zabihah, it is the world’s first global halal restaurant discovery and delivery platform, including 14,000 locations in the U.S. and 50,000 worldwide. In this conversation, Shahed and I cover many aspects of the halal food scene, and the parallels with Jewish kosher laws among other things.


Highlights: 

  • Halal food as a symbol of Muslim presence in America.
  • Defining Halal and Zabiha.
  • Variations in halal observance among Muslims.
  • Halal as both a spiritual and communal expression.
  • Evolving Halal standards debate.
  • Shared principles and practice between halal and kosher traditions.
  • Eco-Kosher and organic principles in halal practices.
  • Spirituality of Food in Islam.


Bio:
Shahed Amanullah is an accomplished entrepreneur, product developer, and investor/mentor for early-stage startups. He is the founder of Zabihah, the world’s first global halal restaurant discovery and delivery platform, and serves as Managing Director of Elian Capital, a private equity fund manager and investment advisor based in San Antonio. Shahed holds a BS in Engineering from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Georgetown University.


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Shahed Amanullah transcript 

Halal Food in America: By Muslims for Everyone 

 

 

Méli Solomon [00:00:05]:

Hello, and welcome to Living Our Beliefs, a home for open conversations with fellow Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Through personal stories and reflection, we explore how our religious traditions show up in daily life. I am your host, Meli Solomon. So glad you could join us. This podcast is part of my Talking with God Project. To learn more, check out the link in the show notes.

 

Every culture has its food. And in America, each immigrant group has contributed to the bounty of culinary options, from Italian pizza to Jewish delis and much more. Muslims are no different. What this group has brought, however, is a wide array of foods since Muslims hail from many countries. My guest today, Shahed Amanullah, a renowned entrepreneur, created a short list of restaurants that offered halal food in 1998. What began as a simple list for himself and his Muslim friends has grown into a juggernaut. The app, named Zabihah, is now the world's first global halal restaurant discovery and delivery platform, and the parallels with Jewish kosher laws, among other things. And the parallels with Jewish kosher laws, among other things.

 

So pull up a chair and let's dive in. Hello, Shahed. Welcome to my Living Our Beliefs podcast. I'm really pleased to have you on today.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:01:50]:

Hi, Meli. I'm really happy to be here with you.

 

Méli Solomon [00:01:53]:

We are going to be talking about Zabihah and the whole world of halal food, but I'd like to situate you as an individual and as a Muslim. Were you raised as a Muslim?

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:02:09]:

I was born and raised in Southern California, the child of Indian Muslim immigrants. Grew up in a small but growing Muslim community there that was really focused on developing an American Muslim identity and landscape. And that is where I got my hunger for expressing my Islam in an American context. And so all of these things, that I've done since then have been trying to develop a landscape, trying to develop ways that American Muslims can express their identity and develop an Islam that is consistent with being American.

 

Méli Solomon [00:02:50]:

Just to back up a a moment, what is your religious practice, and what sect do you identify with?

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:02:58]:

So I am a traditional Sunni Muslim adherent. I grew up going to a mosque that was fairly multicultural, at Egyptians and Pakistanis and African Americans and white converts. And that community was where I learned how to have a traditional Muslim spiritual practice on weekends, of course, and then apply it during the week where I was one of very few Muslims at my school.

 

Méli Solomon [00:03:28]:

And it sounds like food was a critical part of that from early on in terms of the cultural and religious identities. Is that a fair statement?

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:03:42]:

Absolutely. Food is not just for Muslims, but for everyone, a means of communing with others. It's a means of sharing cultural backgrounds. It's a means of connecting with family and friends. And especially when you're feeling like you're an island in a sea that may not understand you, you come together around food. Food is a central place to anchor your identity. I definitely think that for Muslims in America, food has played a huge role, probably more so than other communities, in anchoring the community to itself.

 

Méli Solomon [00:04:19]:

Yeah. It's a statement of we are here, and it's a way of becoming part of the mainstream American culture. I can imagine how food and other cultural things are a way of saying, hey. We come in lots of shapes, sizes, and colors.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:04:39]:

Absolutely. Most communities, have tried to share what makes them unique with their fellow Americans, especially immigrant communities. One of the first things they'll do is share their food and leave a mark on the cultural landscape. Every community has done this. Muslims are no different. I think the distinction with Muslims is that there's no one culture. The unifying thing is, a, that they're all coming from a Muslim cultural background and a Muslim value system, but also probably the first contact that people will have with Muslims is through their food. Food is the ultimate cultural medium. It's the ultimate way that people will learn about other people. And so I'm happy that food from Muslim cultures around the world has permeated the American landscape.

 

Méli Solomon [00:05:28]:

Before we get into yet more complicated topics, I think a few definitions are in order. There are two words in particular. One is halal, and the other is the name of your app, Zabihah. Can you define those two terms for us?

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:05:43]:

Absolutely. So halal is the very generic word that simply means permissible. It means that, something is acceptable religiously or spiritually to consume, and that is broader than just meat. It covers all sorts of different things that relate to both the quality of the food, but also the practice in which that food was brought to your table. It's it's an ethical system that ensures that from farm to fork, there was no abuse, there was no maltreatment, there was a level of purity. Zabihah is technically the way that an animal is slaughtered, and it is very similar to the kosher method. The kosher method is a little bit more complex and has a few more steps, but both essentially mean a quick and as as painless as possible slaughtering of the animal with a very, very sharp knife and the draining of the blood and a blessing, of course, that is made when the animal is slaughtered as a remembrance of the source of that food. That is generally the practice that Muslims around the world have used to prepare their meat for the last fourteen hundred years.

 

Méli Solomon [00:06:53]:

It seems quite focused on meat. What about if you're a vegetarian? Is this a a very relevant point?

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:07:02]:

It is, actually. Vegetarian food is by default halal because all vegetables are permissible. But also, halal food, for example, cannot contain alcohol. Alcohol is forbidden for Muslims, and so any sort of cooking with alcohol is frowned upon. But Muslims stay away from pork. Generally, everything from the sea is considered halal, and it doesn't even need to be slaughtered in a particular way. It's just generally halal. There's some differences in school of thoughts with respect to shellfish.

 

Méli Solomon [00:07:28]:

And, again, you're you're seeing the parallels here with the Jewish community. The reason there's a focus on meat is because the rules with with respect to preparing meat for consumption are much more particular. It's not just about the way the animal is slaughtered. There are other rules governing what the animal ate. You cannot slaughter an animal in front of another animal because you do not want to cause it stress. You need to feed the animal and give it water. It needs to be in a state of comfort. And then, of course, you say a prayer as you're doing the act.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:07:59]:

It confers that blessing upon upon the meat. And then, of course, this is something that, a Muslim will then feel at peace when they're when they're eating it.

 

Méli Solomon [00:08:08]:

So with your app, Zebia, when was it founded?

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:08:13]:

So I started it in 1998. I was an engineer, working in Silicon Valley at various startups. Of course, the Internet had just emerged on the scene. I was working late and trying to find places to go eat at restaurants with my other software programming friends, and I just put up a web page that had the local restaurants. And I would just tell them go here and and pick a restaurant. And I noticed that people were finding that page, and I realized, you know something? I think there might be a need for this because people are definitely searching for it, and it was all word-of-mouth at the time. So I set it up in 1998. I had found about 200 restaurants around the country that were specifically halal, and it has grown from 200 restaurants in 1998 to over 14,000 in The United States today. And we have now 45 to 50,000 around the world in Muslim minority countries. People have just added these restaurants as a kind of a crowdsourced function.

 

Méli Solomon [00:09:10]:

Wow. That's quite a trajectory of growth there.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:09:13]:

It reflects the changes that have happened in Muslim communities in the West as well. We went from a time where people primarily ate at home or it would eat vegetarian or seafood to being pretty much on every street corner you can find in the world, and the community has changed around that. In the very beginning, the restaurants that were on there, I would categorize as back home comfort food. You know, food from immigrant backgrounds that maybe people missed from their home countries. But the vast majority of it now reflects the general landscape. The fastest growing segments of food on the app right now are Mexican food and Korean food, Nashville hot chicken, things that everyone else is eating. And it's also a reflection of how embedded Muslim communities are in the West that they're expressing their faith through an American cultural medium, and there's no conflict between the two. With that has come a confidence that we're able to do what maybe our parents' generation weren't able to do, which is completely find ourselves whole and at peace with who we are.

 

Méli Solomon [00:10:20]:

Yeah. It's interesting to think about this transition from an immigrant community into just being part of the American landscape. And you're right. This happens with every immigrant community. I think it's actually one of the wonderful things about America is that somehow bit by bit groups are folded in. I wonder if there's also a pull from American society of interest in that immigrant group and, you know, it's just market reaction. What do you what do you think?

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:10:57]:

Oh, I think that's absolutely true, and you see it now in different food trends. So I'll give you an example. Over the past year, we've added probably a 50 to 200 coffee houses that draw from Yemeni and Pakistani and, you know, Middle Eastern tradition as an alternative to mainstream coffee. You know, when you go into these places, there aren't just Muslims in there. It's a buy us for everyone model. I went into one the other day. They're selling these trendy Dubai chocolate bars, you know, that they've been reading about on TikTok. People are just lining up outside to eat these things.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:11:36]:

It's coming from a Muslim culture, but it's something that is a general trend. And, you know, again, every community has had this. Whether it's bubble tea or bagels or whatever, it becomes adopted by society as a whole and as seen as authentic to America. At the end of the day, these communities, you know, that's one of their goals is I just wanna be accepted as one of the landscape, and and here's my contribution to that landscape. America's done a good job of incorporating that, and we've seen it for a bunch of different cultures. And we're now seeing it for different Muslim cultures. And, that's something I'm quite proud of. And to whatever extent that I and the team at Zabihah have have played in in helping make that happen, I'm very proud of it.

 

Méli Solomon [00:12:21]:

This is a lot of positives. Right? All of what we've said so far is absolutely positive. We're very supportive. We're cheerleaders of this. And yet I can't deny that we're having this conversation in January of twenty twenty five. The US and and other parts of the world is awash in othering, in racism, in all kinds of xenophobia. I find myself wondering about the effect of that on this halal food scene that you're a part of.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:13:01]:

That's a great question. I wanna give a little anecdote. Back in 02/2010, there were protests in Lower Manhattan against what people were derisively calling the, quote, unquote, ground zero mosque, a proposed Islamic center that frankly was going to be a wonderful kind of addition to the landscape of New York. And people were protesting it because they felt it was insensitive and things like that. And I had some friends go there to kinda watch what was happening. They recounted to me something very interesting that these people were protesting. And then after their protest, they were lining up at the halal carts to get lunch. And I'm like, you know something? We already won that battle.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:13:42]:

I'm not insensitive to the challenges that can be faced in the space because when you look at Europe and we look at The UK and when you look at Australia, there's a lot of public hostility to halal food, particularly if it is a mainstream restaurant that is serving halal food. Halal is not a bad word in America. You have a restaurant chain called the Halal Guys, has now, closing in on 200 restaurants around America, and nobody's protesting it even though it's called the Halal Guys. If you try to do the same thing in France or Germany or other countries, they would be run out of town. You literally have in in parts of, Europe legislation that is prohibiting both kosher and halal slaughter. It really is aimed at Muslims, but, you know, I would say Jews in Europe, it's kind of collateral damage. They bundled the two together, which has led to a lot of very interesting collaboration between Muslims and Jews in in in Europe to try to push back against it. In Australia, there's a very vibrant and vigorous anti halal movement.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:14:45]:

Even though Australia is one of the world's largest exporters of halal meat. I'm very thankful that we don't have that in The US or Canada. This is a space where the halal seed can be vibrant and can grow and can incorporate more than just us and can create trends that the world follows. And so I'm very, very excited about the landscape here even though I'm well aware of some of the the pitfalls around the world that bigotry and racism has, has brought.

 

Méli Solomon [00:15:14]:

Yeah. Super interesting. We didn't touch on the theological basis for this. Can you just help me out with that? Is it really from the Quran and very important? Is that a serious thing, or is it more of a cultural thing?

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:15:32]:

If you take halal at its most general, you know, nearly every Muslim is observant in that they won't eat pork or they'll avoid alcohol or things like that. But using specifically Islamically slaughtered meat is probably a a minority of those people, of Muslims. In America, there's a a large segment that are very strict about it. There's a large segment that take halal as to I'm not going to eat pork, and I'm not gonna, you know, consume alcohol. For those who are very strict observance of what is halal, it is an expression of spirituality. But, in my research of the people who use our app, a great deal of them do it more for I wouldn't even say cultural reasons. I would say identity reasons than spiritual reasons. Every time that there is a pushback against Muslims in the public square, whether it's 09:11 or that ground zero mosque thing or the rise of Trump or the events of the last year and a half in Israel, Palestine.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:16:34]:

Every single time something like that happens, people wanna find their comfort, and people wanna find their safe space. I genuinely believe, for example, all these Muslim run coffee houses are yearning for a safe space to gather where they can feel protected. So, yes, a big part of it is spiritual. A big part of it is communal as well.

 

Méli Solomon [00:16:54]:

I think it's important to note, and, again, I I see an echo in the Jewish community of there being many levels and ways of expressing your religious and cultural identity. In our community, there's everything from being Jewish means I eat bagels and lox to very strict observance of kashrut and a serious practice and really understanding what you're saying and and all of that. And I'm hearing this in what you're saying as well, Shahad. Am I hearing you correctly?

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:17:33]:

You are. You are. And and the parallels are great. So for example, you will have kosher restaurants that have rabbinical supervision and have their kitchens inspected and things like that. And then you will have kosher delis that are not they're not certified, but they're very rich in culinary tradition. Similarly, about a quarter of the restaurants on Zabihah serve alcohol. Now they're probably not serving it to their Muslim customers. I mean, they probably have a bigger customer base, But the really strict ones, of course, don't.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:18:05]:

Right? And so you'll you'll have that same kind of mix. And there's a little bit of tug of war between the people who use our app. Some of them don't wanna see the restaurants that serve alcohol. Others, you know, don't mind. They're like, as long as I can get my halal burger, I don't care if they serve beer. I'm not gonna order it. So you have that kind of jostling going on, and we're trying to figure out that happy medium where everyone's happy. The commonality between halal and kosher, I have found truly expressed in the scene in New York where, of course, Muslims and Jews are shoulder to shoulder, and a lot of Jewish delis have employed Muslim workers and chefs.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:18:41]:

Many of those Jewish delis, as the owners, you know, decided to retire, sold their restaurants to their employees. The vast majority of them kept it kosher and kept serving that clientele even though now run by Muslims, it's still a Jewish deli. That absolutely makes sense to me because the traditions are so similar, and these people worked side by side, and they saw how it's not just the technicality of kosher and halal. It's the attitude. It's the spirituality behind it. It's the connectiveness behind it. I have done the halal slaughter myself several times since I was a young boy, and I will definitely say that the act of doing it yourself has profoundly changed my relationship with the food I eat and and has been, for me, a very spiritual experience. I mean, I will never look at meat the same way again after having dispatched an animal with my own hands with the prayer that I needed to do.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:19:38]:

I'm not saying that everyone should do that, but I will say that the spiritual nature of that act is not lost on me because I did that. And if anything, it reinforces the importance of me for me to make sure that this is available to many people who want to partake of its benefits whether they did it or not themselves.

 

Méli Solomon [00:19:57]:

I've heard that from others. I read, about a group of people who were very into the farm to table movement, and they decided to dedicate a weekend to slaughtering and completely consuming a sheep. And they talked about the process of the slaughter and the many, many, many dishes that came out of that one animal and how it felt to partake in that. When you did the slaughtering, did you then partake of that animal?

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:20:35]:

Yes. As as a matter of fact, and this is particularly true of our Eid holiday, which is the Eid of the sacrifice where people will generally try to either have an animal slaughtered or go do it themselves. The tradition is is that you take the animal, you keep a third of it for yourself, you give a third to family and friends, and you give a third to the poor. And, specifically, you're not supposed to keep the best third for yourself. You're supposed to distribute the good parts equally to to those groups of people. And that is something that people feel very strongly about. And, of course, you can see the connection between the spiritual act of the sacrifice of that animal, the remembrance of why that animal's there, and the act of both consuming it yourself, sharing with family and friends, and sharing with the poor brings a whole society together. Right? It connects everyone from the people at the margins of society to your own family to that act. And that's something that is, I think, a very treasured part of that particular Eid holiday for Muslims.

 

Méli Solomon [00:21:34]:

One of the things I've seen in the Jewish community, I'm curious if this exists in the in the Muslim community, is what's often called eco kashrut. So rather than following the biblical injunctions about food, what you can and can't eat, for some really liberal Jews, right, this shows up on the liberal end of the spectrum in America. They say, we don't care about the biblical. That's just, you know, kind of an abstract rule. That's that's not important. What we care about is the connection to the land and how we treat animals and plants. What matters is this caring aspect that that you mentioned a bit ago. Is there something similar in the Muslim community?

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:22:24]:

Absolutely. I don't think necessarily universally because, you know, in order to make an animal halal to eat, you do the slaughter. Right? But there's a lot of people, particularly I think in the West, who are realizing that, for example, organic and free range principles are very much harmonious to the spirit of halal. So what good does it make to slaughter an animal for halal purposes if if it was fed animal byproducts its whole life? A lot of the things you hear about factory farms. In the early days of halal, a lot of people preferred it because most halal meat producers were farms. As halal becomes a big business and you start having more factory farms that are part of the halal ecosystem, that's going to be a challenge we face. My personal belief is that if it's not organic, it's not halal. And there are probably a lot of Muslims that actually agree with that.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:23:14]:

Is it codified in that way? Probably not. But I do know that very few people that would disagree with that statement in the halal space. I am hopeful that as we develop our halal standards to be more clearly defined, that we incorporate free range principles, organic principles into our definition of what halal is. There's a practice in bigger farms, for example, where they stun the animal before slaughtering it. And there are a lot of Muslims that say that violates the Halal principle. But, you know, in a lot of majority Muslim countries, stunning seems to be perfectly okay. So there's a theological difference there. And, again, we're trying to navigate that and make sure that people are getting what they would like to get.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:24:00]:

And so that a big struggle for us is trying to find out what these restaurants are serving. You know, is it hand slaughtered? Is it machine slaughtered? Is it stunned? Is it organic? And this is part of the disruption we're trying to solve. As we grow now, people wanna know this information. And so we're trying to provide that for people so they have some peace of mind.

 

Méli Solomon [00:24:18]:

Yeah. Fascinating. On the technical front, in the Jewish community, there are two little symbols, it's a K or a U, that are statements of a certain rabbinic association that has said, okay. This food has followed our practices, and you can eat it with ease. Is there a similar kind of stamp, or is this the kind of process of identifying that you speak of?

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:24:47]:

It's very interesting that the whole process of Halal certification in America has pretty much followed in the footsteps of the kosher certification. We have in our database about a 50 halal certifiers around the world that certify both meat at a processing plant, but sometimes also certify restaurants in much in the same way some of these rabbinical councils do. It's a little bit of a competitive landscape. They will showcase we have these standards, they have those standards. There's no universal agreement, so they kinda jockey around a little bit. But it's a pretty vibrant ecosystem. You have a couple of national certifiers. You have a lot of local certifiers.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:25:27]:

You have some that just certify, you know, the meat at a at a processing plant, and you have others that actually go to restaurants much the same way the rabbinical councils do, and they actually make sure to inspect everything to make sure that there's no there's no presence of anything that would contaminate what they would think of as halal. It's not as strict as, but it's, again, following very much in the footsteps of that.

 

Méli Solomon [00:25:50]:

And is there a little symbol like we have the K and the U?

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:25:54]:

Yes. They'll have their different symbols. Each of them have different symbols. So sometimes, for example, in mainstream grocery stores, you'll see a circle with a crescent with an m in it or or something like that. And all the certifies have their own little logos.

 

Méli Solomon [00:26:08]:

What do you see as the change? Is are are the certifications getting sorted out and moving, or is there a lot of play in that?

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:26:17]:

It's a very fragmented space, but I would I would say this. They're generally responding to the increased adamant nature of the Alal consuming populace to get clearer definitions of what they're doing. Gone are the days where Muslims will just say, oh, well, they said it's halal, so I'll just accept that. No. They're like, I wanna know where how it was raised. I wanna know the status of the farm. I wanna know if it was hand slaughtered or machine slaughtered. And these certifies are responding to that market.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:26:48]:

This is an expression of the increased confidence of Muslims in the West. I think it's an expression of the spiritual nature behind it. And and, by the way, that's a responsibility we all feel pretty deeply at Sabia. People are trusting us, and so we have to, to the extent that we can, you know, make sure that we're very accurate. And it's hard. We don't have resources to send to 14,000 restaurants around the country. And by the way, there was a time where I was gonna do a kosher version of the Vija, but the reason I didn't, is because, I could only identify about a thousand to 1,200 kosher restaurants in America, and they were already listed on the rabbinical council websites. And it it got complicated whereas the whole space is just dales of magnitude bigger. And I figured I'd just focus on that. It's enough of a handful.

 

Méli Solomon [00:27:39]:

Yeah. It's really interesting that you say that because as I understand it, our communities in The US are basically the same size. So it's interesting that when it comes to to food, when it comes to restaurants, there are many more halal restaurants than there are kosher restaurants.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:28:00]:

There are, but I would say that there's a bigger marketplace for kosher products. Studies have shown in the past twenty years that a big portion of the consumers of kosher products were Muslims. By some measures, about a third. I don't know if it's the same today, but at least ten years ago when I was looking at this, a lot of people were were saying that it was about 25% to a third were Muslims buying the kosher. You know, when I was a kid, I would go buy Hebrew National hot dogs because I couldn't find halal hot dogs. Kosher is a perfectly acceptable substitute for Muslims if they can't find halal meat. There's a much bigger and more developed market for kosher products. But because of the intensity that you need to certify a restaurant kosher and the more disparate, Jewish communities, it's hard to kind of maintain more than just a few certified kosher restaurants.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:28:55]:

Whereas the halal space, I noticed a big jump in the number of halal restaurants when restaurant depots started offering halal wholesale meat. And then all of a sudden, a lot of restaurants were like, well, I can just get my halal meat there. It made it much easier for people to go halal.

 

Méli Solomon [00:29:09]:

I'm wondering if another aspect isn't one of these pesky technical differences between halal and kosher, where in Kashrut, we don't mix meat and dairy. So if you have a kosher restaurant, it's either a meat place or it's a dairy place. You don't have that in halal. So so I I wonder if if that is a part of that distinction.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:29:33]:

I think so. The growth of the halal market is primarily because it is a more frictionless, effortless endeavor to start a whole restaurant than a kosher restaurant. Muslims have always been overrepresented in the restaurant space regardless. That has also reflected in the marketplace. I I never ceases to amaze me that even with the number of halal restaurants we have on the Zebia app, whenever a new halal restaurant opens up, there is a line around the block. So so there's something about the marketplace that is just incredibly rich and vibrant. And maybe look. I mean, Muslims don't go to bars. Muslims don't go like, there's not a lot of places where Muslims can go to socialize and to to have that safe space. And so it really comes down to food.

 

Méli Solomon [00:30:20]:

I'd like to shift from these these technical questions to the spiritual aspect and the mindfulness that we we spoke of in our earlier conversation. I can see in my in my own Jewish practice how these fit together. They support each other. But I I'd like to hear more from your point of view of the importance of those elements.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:30:48]:

One of the things I find fascinating about the centrality of food in the Muslim experience is that, you know, on one hand, we have this incredibly vibrant cultural landscape of food in our spaces where various cultures are mixing that either come from around the Muslim world or share in the food of our neighbors. But that goes in parallel with fasting for a month and denying ourselves food for a month. Each of those is a spiritual anchor. There's a spirituality to abstaining from food as a means of remembering where it came from and remembering that not everyone has access to food. But then, you know, the celebratory nature of breaking bread with friends and family, of eating food that you feel at peace eating because you know where it came from. You know, it was mindfully slaughtered. It was mindfully prepared. There's a deep spiritual connection to both the absence of food and the presence of food.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:31:50]:

I don't think that's unique to Muslims, and I don't think that's in any way a coincidence. Spirituality is nourishment for the soul just as much as food is nourishment for the body. And so there's a parallel between the two. Just as you experience the fulfillment and the absence when it comes to food, our spiritual traditions waver between feeling a distance and then feeling a closeness. The act of properly preparing and consuming food is a spiritual, endeavor in its in of itself. And, again, not just for Muslims, for various communities.

 

Méli Solomon [00:32:24]:

What I'm not hearing is an expression of I eat halal because I submit to Allah. I eat halal to follow the rigors of the Quranic requirements.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:32:41]:

That is a big part of it. People will eat regardless if they feel like a spiritual connection to their food. But when you go to a halal restaurant, regardless of what culture it comes from, you will see prayers on the wall. A lot of Halal restaurants will allow their customers to pray if they happen to be during one of the five daily prayer times. We actually track on our app the restaurants that allow you to pray there. I love the fact that a lot of these coffee houses will have a stack of prayer rugs and a designated space where you could pray if you'd want to. It's not a very strict and regimented practice. There's no, like, for example, specific prayer that you say before.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:33:21]:

I mean, there's a specific prayer you say before you slaughter the animal. But, like, if you're going to a whole restaurant, generally, people go and they'll just be mindful and they'll eat. There's not a a lot of practice, you know, associated with that. So if I haven't brought it up, it's it's basically because it's kind of this holistic experience, and it's more about being with other Muslims, being in a place that respects who you are, being in a place where they can pronounce your name right, you know, like, a bunch of these different things. For me, when I take a step back from that, that's when it really hits me. I can walk into a halal restaurant. I can say and have said to me. I can feel that in a world that may not understand me that this is the place I can go to.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:34:04]:

A lot of Muslims will use the Zabihah app almost like the green books of old that black Americans would use to find their safe spaces, particularly when times are kind of tense. I'm glad that people can find these places in their neighborhood. You can go to the most rural of rural places in America, and you will find a halal restaurant. It's a really special thing. It's something that I share with not just Muslims, but my fellow Americans because I want them to know that it's a safe space for them too. If people feel scared of Muslims, if they feel like they don't know what Muslim stands for, go into one of these restaurants and eat their food. See the people eating around you. You know? Learn how to not be afraid of them.

 

Méli Solomon [00:34:46]:

I was going to ask you what you wished for in the the next five years, but I feel like you just answered that question.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:34:53]:

I want people to know how absolutely proud I am of this new generation of young Muslims who are leaders in every sense word in terms of being confident in who they are as Americans, as Muslims, productive members of society wanting to give and food is is a part of that sharing. I think in my lifetime, we're gonna get to a point where people will feel grateful to have Muslims as their neighbors because they benefit so much from them. And it may seem hard for people to believe. A lot of people in the Muslim community think I'm just way too optimistic, but I firmly believe these things. I I truly do because I've seen Muslims in America rise to the challenge, absolutely rise to the challenge in ways that my generation didn't. And my parents' generation certainly didn't. They're not gonna hide anymore. They're not gonna be in the shadows and they're not gonna be scary or tolerate being scared of. And food is a great way to soften hearts. And I I hope that that continues to be the case.

 

Méli Solomon [00:35:56]:

Amen to that. So how can people connect?

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:36:01]:

I'm a very public person. You can find me at Shahed on x and most other social media. Go to shawhed.com, and you'll learn all about me. I encourage people whether you're in Maslow or not to go ahead and download the Zebia app or go to zebia.com and, be a part of this journey where we all learn from each other and we all appreciate each other and build a better America together.

 

Méli Solomon [00:36:24]:

Alright. Well, Shahed, thank you so much for coming on my living our beliefs podcast. I really appreciate it, and I look forward to exploring the halal restaurants in my own neck of Boston. So I wish you a good afternoon.

 

Shahed Amanullah [00:36:39]:

Thank you, Meli, for having me on your podcast. I really appreciate it.

 

Méli Solomon [00:36:45]:

Thank you for listening. This podcast is an outgrowth of my Talking with God Project. If you'd like to learn more about that project, a link to the website is in the show notes. Thanks so much for tuning in. Till next time. Bye bye.