Consumers opposed to Islamic Sharia law are being urged to avoid halal-certified products at the supermarket.
Major brands pay fees to Muslim third-party halal certifiers to confirm their products contain no pork or alcohol products.
However, Halal Choices founder Kirralie Smith claims these funds are going towards Islamic mosques that promote Sharia law, a strict Muslim legal system, and is campaigning for food producers to declare who they pay third-party fees to.
Halal Choices founder Kirralie Smith says halal-certification fees are funding ‘Sharia causes’
‘It’s been established beyond any doubt that the money promotes sharia causes in this country such as the profits go to mosques, Islamic schools and Islamic charities,’ she told media commentator and former federal Labor leader Mark Latham.
Ms Smith, a northern New South Wales farmer who ran as a Senate candidate last year with the right-wing Australian Liberty Alliance, is campaigner for clearer halal labelling.
‘Where companies are paying halal certification fees, they’re not marking it on the labels so it’s kind of like this marketing program they don’t want anyone to actually know about which is strange,’ she said.
The conservative activist has also hit out at Labor senator Sam Dastyari, a self-described ‘non-practising Muslim’ who drinks alcohol but promotes halal food as an example of Australian multiculturalism.
Kirralie Smith (left) told media commentator Mark Latham (right) halal fees were hidden
‘He mocks Islam by trying to tell us halal is very important and the same time as having a beer,’ she told the Mark Latham’s Outsiders program.
‘I’ve seen a photo of him drinking wine out of a cask and saying that he’s a non-practising Muslim.
‘There really isn’t any such thing. It doesn’t make any sense. He’s offensive to Muslims in the sense that he upholds halal in one hand but alcohol is not halal.
‘It’s the opposite of halal.’
Labor senator Sam Dastyari drinks alcohol despite identifying as a ‘non-practising Muslim’
Last week, Senator Dastyari told an audience at the University of Sydney that he was an atheist who identified as a Muslim for cultural reasons, as he spoke about his new book, One Halal of a Story, with former human rights commissioner Gillian Triggs.
‘The idea of being a non-practising Muslim is, for some reason, is so strange for so many people to comprehend, which for me is bizarre because everyone I know is some form of non-practising Christian to various degrees,’ he said.
‘I culturally identify with my Muslim heritage.’
The Labor powerbroker from Sydney also described the campaign against halal certification as an anti-Muslim agenda in disguise.
‘It’s all about the code words at the moment. It’s not acceptable to turn around and say, ‘I don’t like Muslims’,’ he said.
‘So they say, “I don’t like halal certification”.’
Senator Dastyari coined the term ‘halal snack pack’ to describe chips served with halal-certified kebab meat and lots of sauce.