Offensive (but tasty) crisps“Crisps” is the British name for salty crispy snacks generally known in North America as “chips”.  That’s right: Muslims in the UK are up in arms over junk food.

Senior Muslim figures have said that they are shocked that a number of Walkers snacks contain traces of alcohol and eating them is therefore against their religion.

A tiny amount of alcohol is used in some products as a chemical agent to extract flavour.
. . .
Shuja Shafi, who chairs the food standards committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that he intended to investigate. “Certainly we would find it very offensive to have eaten food with alcohol.”

Predictably, Muslim authorities are divided over whether Islam requires the faithful to abstain from trace amounts of alcohol. 

[S]cientists and scholars from the Islamic Food Council agree that from 0.01 to 0.05 percentage is insignificant and therefore the product can be considered halal.
. . .
"It does not matter what percentage of alcohol is involved. Besides Muslims, there are a lot of teetotal people who would not like to consume alcohol in any form," [Masood] Khawaja [of the Halal Food Authority] said.

Somehow I doubt that sane teetotalers would feel duty-bound to avoid products containing less than one-twentieth of one-percent alcohol.

What's more, the UK Muslim Law Council, “Britain’s highest authority on halal food”, issued a fatwa in 2004 approving for Muslim consumption soft drinks containing, not only very small amounts of alcohol, but also pork by-products.

I must admit that I did find one aspect of this story very shocking:  Brits spell “chilli” with two l’s.  I didn’t know that!

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