Conclusion

Abstract

Five overarching themes have permeated discussions throughout this book: the politics of the national, diasporic identity, and ethnicity; economics in relation to Islam and Malaysia’s role in the global market for religious/ethnic commodities; science as a privileged domain highlighting the role of Islam in contemporary, secular settings; authority, particularly linked to the power involved in halal certification embedded in contemporary Malaysian and Islamic institutional discourses and practices; and the multiplicity, ambiguity, and strategizing that arises among middle-class Malays from the above transformations. These themes are all entangled in modern halal, and they effect pluralization of consumer choices and everyday strategies among many Muslim consumers. I shall now conclude my discussion of these overarching themes and bring in a few examples from the preceding chapters with particular reference to informants’ understanding and practice of halal. London is a charismatic entity with a marketplace in which the commercial exchangeability of objects, attributes, and skills produces charisma, that is, the proliferation of halal is a good example of a particular type of urban exchangeability that is imbricated in the mundane practices of everyday shopping. Simultaneously, London is a global halal frontier on which questions of politics, economics, science, and authority interpenetrate in a dynamic manner.