Recently, I got hold of a Muslim-friendly Guidebook published by the Japan Tourism Agency. A large number of restaurants were listed as ‘Halal’ in that guidebook. As our mission is to list up all the Halal restaurants operating in Japan on our website, I decided to visit all of them. It has been only few days since I started the journey of discovering the Halalness of these restaurants. However, there were some shocking facts I wanted to face during my visits to these restaurants.
Now I am really in doubt whether to list these restaurants as Halal as some of them are violating the very basic norms of our Deen. I want to share my frank observations about the Halalness of these restaurants with you guys.
First, most of the so called ‘Halal’ restaurants offer beer and wine in their menu although the meat they serve in their restaurants is fully Halal. They give the usual argument that if they do not offer wine they can not survive as a business.
I found another type of restaurants which offer almost naked dance to please their guests during the night time although they also claim to offer Halal only meat in their menu. It could be so dangerous to visit these type of restaurants especially with your family including kids.
On my visit to one of these restaurants, I noticed they offer shisha, a type of water tobacco or hookah as they call it in the Sub-continent. Drinking Shisha could be interesting for some folks. However, it creates large volumes of smoke which could be dangerous for you or for your family if you decide to visit this type of ‘Halal’ restaurant.
My journey of discovering Halal restaurants has also taken me to still another type of restaurants which offer Halal meat along wit non-Halal meat including pork or without it. As the kitchen size in most of the restaurants in Japan is too small, do you think the kitchen staff could take due care in making sure that Halal meat is not mixed with non-halal one, and, the utensils used to clean or cut the meat or cook it are actually kept separately. I can not imagine happening it like this in these types of restaurants as their sole aim is to maximize their profits.
Please give em your advice on what should be the minimum criteria for listing up restaurants as Halal in Japan. Any and all opinions no matter how absurd they may look in the beginning, are welcomed.
This information is very useful. As a Muslim who seeks ambition of coming to Japan one day, this post seemed very helpful. Thanks for the warning, we should be careful with these restaurants. May Allah help us. amen
in Malaysia, Halal certifiqate will not be given if they sell beer or wine even though their meat or food r from halal source
Salamualaikum,
it’s really a sacred task. may ALLAH bless you
As you have visited in these restaurants yourself, you are requested to write them a letter asking them to have a Halal certificate from any of the renowned halal certifying institutions.
Also, a letter should be sent to Japanese authorities to make sure no restaurant can use word “halal” until they have halal certification from any halal certifying reliable institution to gain trust of Muslim tourist and investors and encourage them to come to Japan.
And if list of those institutes is provided to them, that will be great.
The best way to write to these restaurants is to keep them all in 1 email and keep few big muslim communities of japan aswell in same email, so when they see alot of names and emails they will feel the pressure and consider the seriousness of the issue.
If any restaurant gets the certification on your request, Appreciation certificate (hard copy) should be sent to them.
As you mentioned minimum criteria, which is positive and shows broadness of your mind.
you are requested to take things in account on basis of halal and haram, as for example Shisha / hookah is not haram, so restaurant offering hookah should be listed in halal restaurants.
Of course, naked dance, wine, beer and restaurant offering both (halal and pork) should not be listed as halal.
jazakALLAH
Assalamu Alaikum
I know this is an old post but the subject is important and interesting, I’m wondering however if these restaurants are supposed to be for Muslims or just Muslim-friendly, because if they are just trying to be Muslim-friendly then we can not expect them to follow all Islamic rules, the owner could simply be a non-Muslim trying to make a living and we can not deny them that. Perhaps the halal certificate could differentiate halal food from halal restaurants? a halal restaurant would have halal food and follows Islamic rules (western people would call it family-friendly), while a halal-food restaurant would provide halal food but remains “Enter-at-your-own-risk” for Muslims, mixing halal and non halal food is definitely a problem and shouldn’t be certified as halal because restaurants have busy kitchens and mistakes will happen.
Jazak Allah Khairan