The far right,banal nationalism and the reproduction of Islamophobia through the consumer activist campaign of Boycott Halal

Abstract

In this case study, we examine a UK-based anti-halal consumer activist campaign called the Boycott Halal Campaign (BHC). Using critical discourse analysis applied to online data, we show how, by framing halal-certified products as an existential threat to the UK, BHC drew from and contributed to the institutionalized ideology of Islamophobia. Given the potential of markets and consumptionscapes in increasing the visibility of ethnoreligious markers, we show how the far right has used these mundane arenas as fertile grounds on which to reproduce its discourse through banal nationalism and exclusionary civilizationism. We argue that beyond public protests, the far right has used consumer activism as a powerful tool for recruiting members and mobilizing different groups against Islam and Muslims. We contribute to the sociological accounts of inter-group identity dynamics by showing how activists can leverage the securitization discourse to mobilize different groups for their political ends. We argue that such mobilization (aimed at reproducing a collective identity) becomes possible when a social group perceives its collective identity to be under threat by another social group. The study calls for more research on how and why different forms of exclusionary ideologies can arise and evolve over time and what tools and mechanisms they can use to transmit their agendas and recruit members.

Keywords

banal nationalism Boycott Halal consumer activism consumption and markets exclusionary civilizationism far right Islamophobia societal security

Introduction

On 23 July 2015, the Manchester Magistrates Court found a man guilty of putting anti-halal stickers of ‘beware halal is barbaric and funds terrorism’ on packets of meat at a Sainsbury’s supermarket in Salford. The man was given a month-long curfew and a fine of £176.5 for damaging meat packages. The offender ‘pleaded guilty to racially aggravated criminal damage but insisted that he was protesting against the halal slaughter of animals after watching a television documentary’ (Manchester Evening News, 2015). The ‘self-proclaimed “animal lover”’ said to the court that he had obtained the stickers from someone over the Internet where he had come across an anti-halal group who had ‘more extreme views that went in to religion, funding and terrorism’ (Manchester Evening News, 2015).

In this article, we argue that the above incident depicts only a small part of a bigger picture of how the far right used markets and everyday spaces of consumption as fertile grounds on which to (re)produce Islamophobia. Applying critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2013) to the online qualitative data collected via netnography (Kozinets, 2019), we show how the Boycott Halal Campaign (BHC, a UK-based consumer activist campaign) used framing (e.g. consumer rights, animal welfare and food safety) to mobilize different groups against halal-certified products (halal, hereafter) and project them (and Muslims and Islam) as an existential security threat to the UK.

Our study corresponds to Hopkins’ (2020) call for more research on how, beyond the activities of the right-wing politicians, Islamophobia is shaped also by ‘diverse interest groups, including those associated with the alt-right and those operating persistently through diverse forms of online and social media’ (p. 584). This kind of research, as Hopkins notes, can shed more light on ‘who [Islamophobia] affects, where and when it happens, what its impacts are, [and] what enables [it]’ (p. 586). In line with recent studies (e.g. Ganesh & Faggiani, 2024; Menon, 2024; Stroup, 2023), we show how digital technologies (e.g. the social media) enable the acceleration of Islamophobia and allow campaigns such as BHC to reinforce the pre-existing Islamophobic discourse. We propose that along with other signifiers such as phenotypes, minarets, hijab and festivities (Meer & Noorani, 2008; Najib & Hopkins, 2020; Stroup, 2024), markets increase the visibility of ethnoreligious markers that become targets for the far right. Since markets embody the interests of different stakeholder groups, they avail these groups with vital symbolic and material resources to pursue their goals via different forms of activism (Jafari et al., 2022; Ulver & Laurell, 2020). Given such potentials of markets, we argue that beyond public protests (Castelli Gattinara & Pirro, 2019), the far right has also used consumer activism to reproduce Islamophobia and that mundane spaces of consumption and markets can offer fertile grounds for practising ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig, 2017) and ‘exclusionary civilizationism’ (Brubaker, 2017).

We contribute to the sociological accounts of identity dynamics by showing how activists can leverage the securitization discourse and consumer activism to mobilize different groups for their own political ends. We also explain the symbiotic relationship between the embeddedness (institutional nurturing) and embodiment (situational manifestations) of Islamophobia and show how the phenomenon can be reproduced through complex mechanisms and power dynamics aimed at racializing, alienating and vilifying Muslims. These issues, as the literature informs, are critical to theorizing Islamophobia. For example, in Garner and Selod’s (2015) view, Islamophobia is the racialization of Muslims, perceiving them as a homogeneous race (regardless of their diverse beliefs and ethnicities) and subjecting them to racism. Concerned with framing Muslims as a single religious group, Vakil (2010) sees Islamophobia as a language game and power exercise aimed at subverting Muslims’ subjective identities. For Sayyid (2010, p. 15) it is a form of racialized governmentality, rooted in colonialism-orientalism and directed towards ‘the disciplining of Muslims by reference to an antagonistic Western horizon’. Modood (2018, p. 40) defines Islamophobia as ‘the racialising of Muslims based on physical appearance or descent as members of a community and attributing to them cultural or religious characteristics to vilify, marginalise, discriminate or demand assimilation and thereby treat them as second class citizens’.

Despite variations in theorizing Islamophobia (see Vakil & Sayyid, 2023), the general view is that, as something insidious and mutable, it targets not just a religion or a religious group but an ethnoreligious population (Ganesh et al., 2024; Modood, 2023). Islamophobia’s insidiousness (e.g. vilifying Muslims), depends on its modalities – the institutional characteristics (e.g. histories, political and legal systems) of the societies in which it occurs (Ganesh et al., 2024). For example, the post-9/11 securitization of Muslims (Jones et al., 2019; Meer & Noorani, 2008) and the rise of the far right’s anti-immigration stance in Europe dually vilified Muslims as ‘Muslim’ ‘immigrants’ (Jafari & Goulding, 2008; Kozaric, 2024), an idea that ordinary citizens have also subscribed to (Hussain & Bagguley, 2012; Mansson McGinty, 2020; Najib & Hopkins, 2020). Other examples include a Russian agency’s use of Islamophobia to manipulate the American far right voters’ support for Trump (Ganesh & Faggiani, 2024), blaming China’s Hui Muslims for the spread of coronavirus (Stroup, 2024), a Hindutva group’s use of online Islamophobic humour to revive a triumphant memory (Menon, 2024), and the global ‘scientification of Islamophobia’ by creating WikiIslam (Kozaric & Brekke, 2024).

In the remainder of the article, first, we provide an overview of the tactics of far-right movements. Then, we elaborate on the concepts of societal security and securitization as our analytical lens. Next, we offer a brief account of the halal-certification context before explaining our research setting and method. Then, we present our findings, followed by our discussion and conclusion.

Tactics of far-right movements

Many studies have specifically examined how the far right mobilizes different groups in society. For example, the propagation of ethnicity-based nationalism triggered ethnocentric ideologies and contributed to the expansion of xenophobia in Germany and Italy (Koopmans & Statham, 1999). Shifting its discourse from a party-based issue to a civil society-based problem, Germany’s PEGIDA used street protests to amplify its societal embeddedness and to recruit members (Hutter & Weisskircher, 2023). Castelli Gattinara and Pirro (2019) discuss how beyond their macro- (societal political opportunities) and meso-level (organizational strategies) activities, PEGIDA and the English Defence League (EDL) also operate on a micro-level: employing social movement tactics¹ (Pirro, 2023), they engage ordinary citizens by responsibilizing them to protect their ‘national’ security against threats coming from hostile groups such as immigrants and Muslims. Street protests, therefore, are used by these groups as a powerful means of creating and maintaining solidarity among their members. Reiterating the same point, Tipaldou and Uba (2019) show that the Greek Golden Daw’s (a far-right political party) use of social movement tactics in the form of public protests has evolved along with the majority public’s concerns about financial hardship. Overall, in far-right social movements, populistic and manipulative discourses loom large in shaping people’s psychology (Sternisko et al., 2020). Such manipulation, as Fekete (2018) argues, owes its rising power to the fact that far-right politicians often (e.g. in parliamentary debates) refer to the issues (e.g. refugee crises and economic hardship in Europe) that have occupied the public imagination and the media. More explicitly, by forming street protests, they scapegoat immigrants and minority groups including Muslims (Fekete, 2018). The far right’s achievements are enabled by the West’s ‘reactionary democracy’ that normalizes racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia and allows the far-right politicians to speak on behalf of the majority public in an exaggerated fashion (Mondon & Winter, 2020).

Beyond public protests that (re)produce far-right propaganda and increase the electoral chances of far-right political parties (Castelli Gattinara & Pirro, 2019), recent consumer studies confirm that consumer activism is increasingly employed (as part of broader far-right movements) by different groups associated with the far right. For example, Luedicke (2015) reports that driven by national protectionism, some native residents in Austria boycott companies that cater to Muslim immigrants. Ulver and Laurell (2020) and Cambefort and Pecot (2020) show that consumer activism has become a crucial tool for far-right ideologies to pursue multiple projects such as ethnocentrism, extreme nationalism or xenophobia, Islamophobia, and so forth. Ulver (2022) also argues that far-right populists around the world paradoxically use anti-consumption activism (e.g. resisting neoliberalism) to mobilize their advocates against democratic values while developing their own consumer culture that extensively uses neoliberal principles and tools. As such, consumer activism is a useful lens through which to understand how the far-right discourse both produces and is produced by different discourses that securitize and vilify their adversaries’ identities.

Societal security and the securitization of Muslims

Concerned with the security of society as a whole (rather than the security of the state against external and internal threats), societal security focuses on power dynamics and conflicts and on how members of a given society (attempt to) preserve their collective identity and shared values that enable that society to function (Buzan, 1993). From this perspective, identity (e.g. ethnic or religious) is vital to sustaining a societal group’s security because it is identity that holds different individuals together as members of that group (Buzan, 1991; Wæver, 1993). As Jenkins (2014) notes, individuals’ identities have an innately social basis because they are dynamically shaped through ongoing meaning-making processes, negotiations and interactions with other people around them. Each societal group has a sense of shared identity, transmitted via language, everyday life practices (e.g. national cuisine, using national currency and supporting national sports teams) and culture (e.g. arts and education) from one generation to the next. These everyday practices, as Billig (2017) explains in reference to ‘banal nationalism’, play a vital role in shaping people’s collective identities such as nationalism. This is because such collective identities are not simply abstract ideologies; they are constantly reproduced and reinforced through people’s mundane and routine practices. When such forms of identity are (perceived to be) threatened by other societal groups (e.g. immigrants or adjacent ethnic/religious groups), societal insecurity arises. Threats, however, can be real or imagined (Buzan, 1993).

Societal groups that feel threatened embark on defending their identity particularly when they feel that their governments fail to protect their collective identity (Wæver, 1993). To thwart a (perceived) threat, such groups largely draw on their language, culture, history, religion and indigenous myths and symbols (Alter, 1994). They define their shared identity and consciousness through distinction: ‘encounters with the “alien”, other forms of language, religion, customs, political systems, make people aware of their close ties, shared values and common ground that render communication with their own kind so much easier than with outsiders’ (Alter, 1994, p. 12). Yet, sometimes, antagonism between different societal groups can escalate when politicians and the media heighten identity sentiments (e.g. nationalism) (Anderson, 1991; Buzan, 1993). A direct consequence of such antagonism is the securitization of everyday life spaces (e.g. consumptionscapes) where (perceived) threats are immediately felt in tangible objects and practices (Jafari et al., 2015). Since threats to societal identity are perceived to be existential, a security discourse becomes a major defence mechanism whereby the societal group feeling vulnerable attempt to thwart threats (Wæver, 1993).

Scholars of societal security (e.g. Buzan 1991, 1993; Wæver 1993, 1996) emphasize that societal insecurity is more likely to happen in multicultural societies because in such contexts different groups’ perceptions of security can change over time. For example, the manifestations of a societal group’s material and symbolic culture may be seen as threatening to other societal groups’ identities. This is because, regardless of their relative size and power (i.e. minority–majority dynamics), societal groups’ perception of equilibrium in society can change. Such perception changes can occur due to many factors such as feelings of discrimination or unfair distributions of socioeconomic resources by the state, losing control over power in society, or certain societal groups’ negative views towards other sociocultural groups (e.g. based on ethnic/religious biases) (Luedicke, 2015). In such situations, however, and within their national boundaries, states can also adopt a securitization approach in order to gain public support. They can, for example, securitize and accordingly take extraordinary measures (e.g. constrain and closely monitor) against certain groups (e.g. immigrants) that are seen as security concerns in society (Saleh, 2010). When power dynamics of this kind permeate society, minority groups (perceived as threat by majority groups or the state) experience insecurity and become subject to different forms of discrimination (Jackson & Doerschler, 2016).

Securitizing identity involves legitimating the use of extraordinary measures by different actors (e.g. civilians, politicians and the militia – such as the militia movement in the US) to implement coercive measures. This process justifies actors’ intervention to address societal insecurity problems mainly by broadly politicizing what is framed as a threat. For example, as part of securitization of Muslims, and in line with her rhetoric against halal food in France (The Independent, 2014), Marine Le Pen compared Muslims’ Friday prayers in the streets of Paris to the Nazi occupation of France in World War II (The Independent, 2015). Such framing of Muslims is not confined to France alone as it appears in other countries too. For example, in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, where there are oppositions to halal food, Muslims are framed as a societal security threat not only to these countries’ national identity but also to their collective civilizational identity. In other words, the far right’s exclusionary discourse not only adopts a nationalistic approach to frame Muslims as the dangerous ‘other’ to individual nations (Valluvan, 2021); it also takes a regional transnational stance to depict Muslims as a ‘religious group’ threatening the European civilization rooted in Christianity (Brubaker, 2017). In the next section, we briefly explain the halal-certification context before describing our research setting and method.

A brief account of the halal-certification context

Halal in Arabic means permissible. When applied to foods and beverages (F&B, hereafter) in Islamic law, it means that such products do not contain alcohol, pork and pork derivatives. Halal meat, in particular, also means that when slaughtering the animal, the Muslim butcher recites ‘In the name of Allah’, signifying that humans cannot take an animal’s life unless for survival. Parallel with the rise of F&B exports from Muslim-minority to Muslim-majority countries and the presence of Muslims in Western countries (as sojourners or immigrants), halal certification has also increased over the past years (Jafari & Sandikci, 2016). Led by a council of Muslim jurists and scientists, this certification mechanism entails certain standards to ensure that the F&B products targeting Muslim consumers comply with the Islamic law. For example, given the importance of animal welfare in Islamic teachings, animals must be treated fairly and their slaughtering should cause them minimum pain (Masri, 2016). Laboratory tests should also confirm that F&B products are not contaminated. Although non-stun industrial and ritual (e.g. Eid al-Adha) slaughtering (similar to Jewish and Sikh methods) is still practised by Muslims, pre-stunned slaughtering (less painful for animals) is widely used in the halal industry (similar to the non-halal mainstream slaughtering method in the West) (Jafari & Sandikci, 2016).

Since F&B businesses (e.g. manufacturers, slaughterhouses and retailers) in different countries must comply with certain standards (e.g. food safety, animal welfare and hygiene), halal-certification is an additional quality assurance mechanism that businesses subscribe to, either mandatorily (e.g. exports from non-Muslim businesses to Muslim-majority countries) or voluntarily (e.g. businesses targeting Muslims in the West) (Al-Teinaz et al., 2020). In the UK, for example, like their mainstream counterparts, halal businesses should, by law, comply with the regulations of the Food Standards Agency (FSA) (UK Government, 2023).

It is also important to note that from an economic perspective, the halal market is crucial to the UK’s national economy. For example, a recent report by UK’s Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) (2023) revealed that domestically, ‘spend in the UK halal food and beverage industry in 2016 reached an estimated £4.64 billion, or 8% of the UK’s total food and drink spend’. The same report also confirms the importance of the halal market to the UK’s exports: ‘Figures from HMRC show that between 2018 and 2019, there was a 301% increase in the volume of UK [halal] lamb exported to the Middle East from animals that were stunned prior to slaughter and there are opportunities to further increase our presence in these export markets.’ In sum, it is in this context that we examine BHC’s opposition to halal. Next, we explain our research setting and method.

Research setting and method

BHC was a UK-based campaign that called for boycotting ‘any company or organisation that promotes or uses Halal products and services’ (www.facebook.com/BOYCOTTxHALAL). BHC had an official website (www.boycottHalal.com) which was accessible during our data collection between 2013 and 2021. Launched in the late 1990s, the website functioned as BHC’s official manifesto with a limited degree of user interaction (visitors posting comments). BHC launched its main Facebook page (www.facebook.com/BOYCOTTxHALAL) in 2010 to enhance its visibility and mobilization. At the time of data collection, the Facebook page had about 90,000 followers, but no new post has appeared on the page since July 2021. It is not clear why the website became unavailable or why the Facebook page froze in 2021, but possible explanations include: (a) loss of solidarity among BHC members or the campaign leaders’ fear of prosecution – this is likely because in 2021 two Britain First (BF) leaders were financially fined for making false claims about a halal certifier’s funding of terrorism (The Independent, 2021); (b) recent attempts to inform hate crime legislations related to Islamophobia (Torrance et al., 2021) may have made BHC pause their attack on halal. Whatever the reason might be, the campaign has been inactive since July 2021 (i.e. the website no longer exists; the Facebook page is frozen; and no campaign activities have been observed).

The identity of the BHC founder(s) has remained a mystery, but critics have linked BHC to BF and EDL as ‘boycott halal’ has been a key theme in these groups’ discourse (Islamophobia Watch, 2013; The Guardian, 2017). To learn more about the campaign and its organizers, we tried to reach out to the website and Facebook administrators during our data collection but received no answer. BHC used a celebrity endorsement strategy. For example, Pat Condell’s (the British writer, stand-up comedian and internet personality) videos in vilifying halal were largely present in the campaign. BHC called upon its members to sign online petitions asking the government to entirely ban or at least limit halal in the UK. It also circulated provocative visuals of abattoirs and images associated with terrorism (e.g. Abu Qatada al-Filistini) to amplify a sense of threat from halal. Beyond the online space, ‘boycott halal’ was a key slogan in EDL’s public protests (The Guardian, 2017). BHC also organized pickets against businesses involved in halal (Belfast Telegraph, 2017; Lancashire Telegraph, 2010) and urged its members to physically damage halal products in supermarkets (BBC, 2015).

As a case study, we examine the consumer activist campaign of BHC (part of a broader far-right movement) in which consumer-citizens sought to forge a change in society (Kozinets & Handelman, 2004). In such activist campaigns, communication plays a vital role in resource mobilization. Since the website and Facebook page were BHC’s main communication tools, for data collection we adopted netnography, an ethnographic method applied to the study of qualitative data in the online environment (Kozinets, 2019). Netnography enabled us to observe (longitudinally) activists’ opinions, attitudes and interactions, and subsequently trace developments in the campaign (Kozinets, 2019). We collected data during 2013–2021. We began by reading the material on BHC’s website and Facebook page. Over time, we transferred the textual (posts) and visual (pictures) data from both platforms to two separate Word documents (N = 472 pages for the website and N = 750 pages for the Facebook page) for initial screening. Since a lot of material was recycled on both platforms (e.g. re-posted previously shared contents), we transferred the unrepetitive contents to a single file for analysis (N = 453 pages). Visual data were examined to understand how they stimulated discussions among the activists. For example, our analysis of such data revealed that, over time, ‘boycott halal’ rapidly permeated the far right’s discourse manifested in their public protest placards. Given the distressing nature of the visual data, we will present only verbatim texts (without correcting their grammatical or spelling errors) referenced as BHCW (the website) and BHCF (Facebook). While BHCW posts include the admin’s and activists’ views, BHCF posts contain quotes only from the latter group. After obtaining research ethics approval from the University of Strathclyde and following the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) guidelines, we used data anonymization. That is, beyond pseudonymization (giving number codes to the individual activists), we used the data that are no longer accessible on the Internet (both BHCF [possibly because the activists removed their comments] and BHCW [because the website is no longer available]). However, our full dataset (including the quotations used in this article) was securely deposited in the University of Strathclyde’s data management system.

Our analytical approach followed the principles of critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 2013). We chose CDA because it best accounts for the role of language in power dynamics, the construction of social relations and (re)production of ideologies (Fairclough, 1989), a focal point in this study. We applied Fairclough’s (2013) CDA model consisting of three interrelated dimensions: text analysis (describing data), processing analysis (interpreting data) and social analysis (explaining the context in which data are produced and performed). Given the interdependence of these analytical levels and the importance of simultaneous and iterative transitions between them, we started our analysis from the beginning of data collection. We began by understanding the data (e.g. diction in texts and their meanings) by focusing on the texts that most triggered discussions. Data interpretation required us to consider the situational context in which data were produced, i.e. how BHC’s discourse connected Islam and Muslims to terrorism, anti-immigration and national protectionism (economic, social and cultural), or concerns about food safety and animal welfare. From the perspective of intertextuality and discourse framing (Fairclough, 1992), our analysis shows how BHC’s hybrid narrative, comprising multiple discourses, aimed to signal a single message through a securitized and militarized discourse, that is, halal is framed as Muslim’s conspiracy to invade the UK.

Regarding positionality (Fairclough, 2013), our disagreement (stemming from our deep knowledge of halal markets and Islamophobia) with BHC’s argument has been instrumental for scrutinizing data and presenting counterarguments. To elaborate, following Hopkins (2020), in this study, we have adopted an ‘academic activism’ position to refute BHC’s reasoning. Such activism, in Hopkins’ view, means that ‘aware of the continuation of older forms of discrimination as well as the emergence of new contexts for hate (particularly those that present themselves online and in digital environment’, academics should take a ‘scholar-activist’ positionality to challenge institutionalized ‘stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination’ in society (p. 590). This positionality, as Hopkins further notes, can foster solidarity amongst researchers working on different forms of injustice and help collectively fight ‘exclusionary institutional practices’ or ‘online forms of hatred’ (p. 591). Our positionality also aligns with Mondon and Winter’s (2020) argument that instead of claiming to be ‘objective bystanders’, academics concerned with the rise of inequalities in society should utilize their capacity to influence the agenda by delegitimating racism and the far-right ideology. Next, we present our findings.

Analysis of findings

Unlike other activist campaigns (e.g. advocating LGB rights [Fish et al., 2018] and ecological sustainability [Howard, 2023]) that often have a focused theme, BHC was infused with a variety of themes (e.g. animal welfare, food safety and consumer rights). As we will discuss, such diversity – reflected in BHC’s tagline ‘It’s Wrong for So Many Reasons’ (BHCW) – was a deliberate strategy to demonize halal as ‘the source of all evil’ (BHCW). To identify and avoid ‘the evil’, therefore, BHC asked the government to ban halal and, in the meantime, enforce a labelling law which allows consumers to differentiate between halal and non-halal meat:

We as consumers should not have to rely on Muslims to label their ritually slaughtered meat – We call on our Government to Ban Halal Meat & until they do – Label it in plain English. . . Our Governments are responsible for protecting our right to be informed what we are eating – we clearly need more transparency in labelling if we are to make a reasoned choice. We need to demand that all meat that has been dedicated by praying is given a ‘RS’ Label for ‘Ritual Slaughter’. (Admin – BHCW)

As Hussein (2015) notes, the focus on something as non-descript as labelling signals a shift away from the demonization of hijab and minarets as the threatening ‘visible signifiers of Islamicness’. As such, for BHC, the object of fear (i.e. halal) was vilified not for its ‘visible transformation of the landscape’, but for its ‘near-invisibility’. Although halal products and services (e.g. restaurants) carry the halal logo (to target Muslim consumers), BHC argued that the existing signage was not visible enough. Labelling would, therefore, provide BHC with more visual evidence to vilify halal more extensively. For example, BHC employed visual imagery (e.g. photos of animals allegedly slaughtered in halal-certified abattoirs) to depict halal as a ‘barbaric’ practice that violated animal welfare. These images then triggered conversations about Muslims’ ruthlessness:

This [labelling] is important as I, and many others that I converse with, are against the barbaric slaughter of animals according to Islamic codes. . . I and many others choose NOT to eat Halal. . . (Activist 1 – BHCF)

I dont want to eat halal food if I dont want too, this barbaric act is for them and them alone if the food is got from outside uk.it should not be anywhere else in uk and I shouldnt have to read every feckin label to make sure its not devil blessed halal. (Activist 2 – BHCF)

This highlights BHC’s biased and hypocritical approach to the issue of animal welfare, which is central for halal-certification. BHC not only did not acknowledge the pre-stunned similarity between halal and non-halal industrial practices, but also completely omitted the widespread exploitation of animals in Western geographies rooted in the projects of colonialism and capitalism (Ucko & Dimbleby, 2007). It also ignored the prevalence of animal welfare movements criticizing Western industries’ violation of animal rights (Weisskircher, 2024). Moreover, singling out Muslims, the campaign did not recognize the non-stun similarities across different cultural contexts. Beyond animal welfare, some activists also stigmatized halal food and those (i.e. Muslims) involved in its production as ‘dirty’:

. . . it’s bad enough the cruelty to the animals but it’s the dirty people that handle it that gets me. (Activist 3 – BHCF)

Why do people eat this dirty food and give them power through your payment? Activist 4 – BHCF)

Beyond halal products, halal shops were also under attack for being ‘unhygienic’:

Another reason to avoid halaal shops if you see their shops they are dirty. . . Their hygiene standards are left at departure gates of home country. . . Hanging carcasses of lamb stored with fruit and veg lead to East Oxford supermarket low hygiene score. (Activist 5 – BHCF)

Claims of this kind, as our findings confirm, were entirely biased because, as explained earlier, halal businesses in the UK already comply with the regulations of the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA). Besides, malpractices in the food industry (including halal) have not been uncommon (Fuseini, 2022). For example, there were few cases in England where a halal slaughterhouse was fined for breaching animal welfare standards (The Guardian, 2015) or a halal retailer was found guilty of hygiene offences (Food Safety News, 2018). However, such malpractices were not confined to the halal market as non-halal businesses were also charged with the same violations. For instance, Bowland Foods in Preston was fined for breaching the animal welfare law (Food Manufacture, 2019) and the FSA reported 4,000 breaches of animal welfare laws at UK abattoirs between 2014 and 2016; a significant majority of offences were committed by non-halal businesses (The Guardian, 2016). Tesco and McDonald’s in England were also both fined for breaching food safety and hygiene laws (Food Manufacture, 2021; The Independent, 2023).

Another major theme in BHC is the call for protecting the ‘national’ economy:

We aim to Boycott all companies and organisations that promote or use Halal products and services in order to reduce demand and slow production. We aim to avoid Halal Farm or Fork or Finance. We aim to support our own country’s economy by seeking out and buying mainstream traditional products and using our traditional national services. We aim to lobby those in Power to curb the over-production of Halal. We will BOYCOTT HALAL! (Admin – BHCW)

This opposition to halal based on nationalistic sentiments also stemmed from prejudice towards Muslims. As discussed earlier, contrary to the BHC’s claim that halal damaged the UK economy, the halal market has been financially beneficial to the country.

Overall, the above-mentioned issues raised by BHC were grounded in a manipulative discourse. As we will discuss in the following sections, although BHC’s narratives were embedded in a pre-existing Islamophobic discourse in society, they aimed to augment the same discourse by employing a securitized/militarized language, one that instrumentalized different sentiments (e.g. religious or patriotic) to heighten perceptions of halal as invasive, harmful and terroristic. In other words, in order to frame halal as a threat to the UK’s national and civilizational values (e.g. observing animal welfare and hygiene), BHC attempted to mobilize different stakeholders (e.g. animal and consumer rights activists and those concerned with hygiene) against halal. Beyond nationalistic references, the civilizational stimuli, as Brubaker (2017) notes, are more powerful means of reducing Islam to a religion (associated with barbarism) juxtaposed with Christianity as a civilization that nurtures modern values.

From economic nationalism to cultural isolationism: A societal identity discourse

Beck (2011, p. 1348) argues that ‘beneath the surface or behind the façade’ of mundane practices in social life, discourses of nationalism and national identities and consciousness remain dominant. Such consciousness, in Billig’s (2017) view, is revived through ‘banal nationalism’; that is, in their day-to-day situations, people are constantly reminded of their national identity. Discourses of this kind aim to defend the shared identities of imagined communities shaped based on common feelings of risk and insecurity. Along the line of ‘progressive nationalism’, which acknowledges the rights of minoritized groups (e.g. immigrants), there is also ‘populist’ or ‘reactionary’ nationalism which, concerned with protecting national identities and economy, employs coercive means to mobilize different groups (Auer, 2010). BHC resembled such protectionism as it raised the flag of nationalism to recruit members to mobilize against a common threat. BHC excluded the halal economy from the ‘national’ and ‘traditional’ domains of the UK’s economic terrain. The focus on the concept of ‘mainstream’ was an indicator of the assumption that the non-Muslim majority were included in the national identity of Britishness while Muslims – regardless of being white or non-white – were excluded from a British national collective identity (Triandafyllidou et al., 2006). Muslims (both immigrants and British-born) were constructed as outsiders and hence an ‘economic threat’ (O’Neil, 2006) to the indigenous non-Muslim society. Such a discourse was based on ‘the essentialist assumption about the “people” as constituting a monolithic unit that has an authentic will of its own’ (Auer, 2010, p. 1165). Since this monolithic image was formed in opposition to the Muslim identity, BHC held Muslims accountable for the economic cost of their own lifestyle with no burden inflicted on non-Muslims: ‘Halal is for the Followers of Islam – NOT Everyone. If Muslims want Halal – Let them Pay for it – NOT Us!’ (Activist 6 – BHCF).

The economic motif drew a clear-cut ‘civilizational divide’ (Brubaker, 2017) between Muslims and non-Muslims (regardless of their nationalities), and the Islamic and non-Islamic (regardless of the differences amongst other religions and the non-religious groups):

We resent the fact that Islamic nations are not operating a halal certification system themselves, but yet they want to impose this system on all Non-Islamic nations AND expect us to pay for it. . . or our exports will not be wanted. . . What kind of Global Blackmail is this from the Islamic Community? !!! Clearly halal is not a racist issue, as people of many different nationalities, languages, skin colours and races are muslim. Apart from the ridiculous return to 7th Century barbarity that is required for Halal Ritual Slaughter, the tampering with our Food from Farm to Plate, by using cloning and GM is outrageous! Most of these halal Products are sold to unsuspecting Non-muslim Shoppers & Consumers – Unlabelled as such! Clearly the haram cast-off meat, that is judged to be unfit for consumption by muslims by post-slaughter inspectors, is sold off to our supermarkets! (Activist 7 – BHCW)

Such narratives of ‘isolationism’ and ‘racialization of space’ (Phillips, 2006), presented under the banner of economic nationalism, support Dwyer’s (1999) view that in contemporary society, communities are (re)shaped based not on the geographies of place but on the interconnectivities and shared identities. Dwyer particularly stresses that beyond the traditional notions of race, skin colour and geographical habitat, communities are socially constructed based on the imaginations of shared identity and feelings of security between their constitutive members. This kind of communality is further evident from the below comment:

i support fully the british way of life and british farmers and believe that meat should be slaughtered by the approved methods we decided upon before the scourge of the muslim way of life seemed to negate everything we had decided was good and proper. Great website btw and im boycotting morrisons from now on and will be encouraging others to due to what ive seen. As white british and against the islamification of out culture i find im quickly running out of options to maintain my belief system and way of life in a country that seems to have foolishly upheld and defended the rights of immigrants and other cultures to do exactly what im trying to do. What about my rights eh! (Activist 8 – BHCW)

This excerpt shows the frustration of a non-Muslim white individual whose attitude towards Muslim immigrants (and ‘other cultures’ which are not specified) could be interpreted as a form of ‘cultural racism’ (Modood, 2018). The anxiety expressed in the quotation spins around the legitimacy and dominance of ‘lifestyle as a narrative of self-identity’ (Giddens, 1991). Although the individual put forward her/his ‘British whiteness’ as a demarcation criterion between herself/himself and non-white Muslims, there was no appreciation for the existence of white British Muslims. Her/his assumption of race was therefore based on not only skin colour but also culture and religious identity (i.e. Muslim immigrants) (Fekete, 2004). For her/him, the dominance of an(other) culture(s) endangered her/his sense of identity in her/his indigenous social environment. This perception of self, as Mondon and Winter (2019) inform us, stems from the far right’s racialization of the white working class in the UK, a dominant populist logic that calls upon this social class (as a group forgotten by the elites) to actively intervene in their society’s politics and determine their future. As evident from the comment below from an activist, Muslims who are in the minority ‘should not’ impose their values and way of life on the non-Muslim majority:

This [halal] is BEING IMPOSED ON US & WE DO NOT LIKE IT OR WANT MUSLIM MEAT!. . . why do we need halal standards for mainstream meat supply in UK?. . . We should uphold British traditions and Judeo-Christian values, because Muslims Do NOT Require Halal Food in Non-Muslim Countries!. . . if there is no halal food available then a Muslim is allowed to eat non-halal food. Surah 2:173 [in Qur’an] states: ‘. . .if there is no other choice,. . . there is no sin in him’. (Activist 9 – BHCW)

In narratives of this kind, campaigners employed a ‘civilizational religious’ (Brubaker, 2017) logic to oppose halal. Despite the emphasis on Muslims being in the minority, a common belief in BHC was that Muslims were a threat to the ‘non-Muslim majority’:

Muslims make up less than 10% of the population, but the majority are seeing a rise in halal certified products. This unwanted over-production of halal products & services is considered by the majority to be threatening their culture and their valued traditions. There is a gradual increase in halal restaurants and Markets. . . (Activist 10 – BHCW)

BHC activists framed halal as a ‘stealth takeover’ of the UK, a belief rooted in the perception that Muslims deliberately hid the halal status of their products (e.g. on packages) and services (e.g. halal signage) in order to deceive non-Muslims. However, the contradiction in this reasoning was that the gradual increase in the visibility of halal marks in the spaces of consumption and markets would refute the notion of ‘stealth takeover’ through hiding the halal status of products (i.e. deceptive packaging and labelling). Nevertheless, what created a perception of threat from halal was the growing visibility of halal through logos and signage in the market. These examples allude to a heightened sense of ‘identity insecurity’ (Buzan, 1991; Wæver, 1993) for those who believed their identity and culture were endangered by the presence of ‘the other’ societal group, named Muslims. BHC, therefore, used a ‘symbolic vocabulary’ (Kaufman, 2006) to highlight the ills of halal and its multiple negative impacts on non-Muslims. As we delved into BHC’s narratives, it emerged that its economy-centred discourse moved towards a terror-based narrative that sought to further stimulate non-Muslims’ sentiments. Emotions are strong means of mobilization as they ‘help people set priorities among competing goals: fear, for example, causes people to prioritize security over other values such as wealth’ (Kaufman, 2006, p. 51).

Securitization of halal markets: Leveraging and propagating Islamophobia

For BHC, halal, Islam and terrorism were interconnected. This linkage manifests the ‘social mobilization’ feature of activist campaigns in which activists seek to recruit as many members as possible (Kozinets & Hendelman, 2004). To fulfil such mobilization, BHC needed to reinforce the severity of the Muslim threat. This was achieved by leveraging the prevalent discourse of Islamophobia and framing halal as ‘Jihad’ and ‘the Islamification of the world’:

Islam is introducing shariah into our society via halal products & services. . . this is a Stealth Jihad in the West and in many worldwide Non-Islamic countries. . . These halal compliant companies, like MORRISONS, have to know that the cost of Islamification of the West. . . as well as abandoning all civilized rules for agriculture & animal husbandry, is the loss of the business from civilized society. . . we see this imposition of halal products & services on Non-Islamic nations as a stealth jihad. . . that we will fight against. . . which is why we BOYCOTT HALAL! (Activist 11 – BHCW)

It is all to do with the tax on Halal foods and even non foods, this tax goes to fund other businesses and terrorism. (Activist 12 – BHCF)

BHC reasoned that since halal certifiers (listed as charity organizations) used their income to fund terrorism, by buying halal-certified products, non-Muslims unwittingly financed terrorism. Although no halal-certifier had ever been found guilty of this offence, BHC insisted on its idea. Such false claims testify to Atia’s (2007) assertion that in the post-9/11 world there is an increasing attitude and set of practices aimed at criminalizing Muslims’ financial networks. These practices, which are geared towards eliminating financial sources for terrorism, are normally achieved through international sanctions and the global monitoring of financial and banking systems by the US. Yet, BHC used an anti-terrorist discourse to intensify the public perception of threat. Fekete (2004, p. 4) argues that since ‘Islam now represents a “threat” to Europe, its Muslim residents, even though they are citizens, even though they may be European born, are caught up in the ever-expanding loop of xeno-racism’. A prevailing perception is that Muslims ‘do not merely threaten Europe as the “enemy within” in the war on terror, their adherence to Islamic norms and values threatens the notion of Europeanness itself’ (Fekete, 2004, p. 4). BHC’s narrative clearly showed this idea. ‘Under the guise of patriotism, a wholesale anti-Islamic racism has been unleashed which itself threatens to destroy the fabric of the multicultural society’ (Fekete, 2004, p. 4). BHC associated Muslims’ everyday life practices with terrorism. Its emphasis on the threats of halal and Islam was therefore an attempt to mobilize non-Muslims to collectively act against those threats. As Wæver (1996, pp. 106–107) posits, ‘[s]ecurity discourse is characterized by dramatizing an issue as having absolute priority. Something is presented as an existential threat: if we do not tackle this, everything else will be irrelevant (because we will not be here, or not be free to deal with future challenges in our own way).’ From this perspective, security is ‘a self-referential practice, not a question of measuring the seriousness of various threats and deciding when they “really” are dangerous to some object’.

Seen through a Wæverian (1996) lens, BHC portrayed halal as ‘an urgent security problem to address’, a discourse resembling a ‘speech act’ (Wæver, 1996) whereby the actor (i.e. BHC) speaks on behalf of the referent object (i.e. non-Muslims) to secure their survival. As Wæver et al. (1993, p. 191) further argues, ‘for threatened societies, one obvious line of defensive responses is to strengthen societal identity. This can be done by using cultural means to reinforce societal cohesion and distinctiveness, and to ensure that society reproduces itself effectively.’ BHC’s emphasis on the cultural distinctions between non-Muslims and Muslims was therefore a defensive way of uniting non-Muslims against a common enemy, namely the halal ‘Jihad’. Anti-Muslim sentiments of this kind, as the literature suggests (e.g. Brubaker, 2017; Fekete, 2018), exemplify the exclusionary views of those who are adamant to draw clear-cut boundaries between what is and what is not part of their collective (e.g. European) identity and civilization.

Discussion and conclusion

The campaign harmed some businesses as they suffered costs arising from product waste (BBC, 2015) or from public relations efforts aimed at fighting BHC’s defamatory activities (Daily Mail, 2018; The Independent, 2017). Beyond these damages, BHC contributed to the far right’s discourse aimed at vilifying Islam and Muslims. The campaign provided the far right with the opportunity to recruit members and mobilize different groups in society (e.g. those concerned with animal welfare, food safety and consumer rights). In turn, BHC owed its mobilization power to an anti-Islam discourse already produced by the far right. This means that the embodiment (i.e. anti-halal consumer activism) and embeddedness (the far right’s anti-Islam discourse) of Islamophobia were mutually dependent as each one reinforced the other.

Therefore, and considering the symbiotic relationship between the far right and BHC, we argue that everyday spaces of markets and consumption provided the far right with fertile grounds on which to reproduce its exclusionary nationalistic and civilizationist ideologies. The far right keeps developing its agenda, using the means that neoliberal and reactionary democracies have provided (Mondon & Winter, 2020; Ulver, 2022). It is no surprise that ‘self-proclaimed animal lovers’ would either unwittingly be tricked into the acts of racism or wear the mask of ‘loving animals’. BHC’s use of new communication technologies also enabled the broader anti-Islam movement to mobilize different groups (e.g. concerned with consumer rights, animal welfare and food safety) under the banner of consumer activism. These technologies helped reproduce a derogatory language aimed at blinding populations, developing majoritarian projects of identity and augmenting a propaganda (Awan, 2014; Ganesh et al., 2024).

The far right’s instrumentalization of consumer activism was a strategic decision to resort to the politics of ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig, 2017) to recruit members. This sense of nationalism was fuelled by flawed imaginations and hegemonic ideologies about the civilizational incompatibility of Judeo-Christian values and Islam, a colonial view rendering Islam an inferior religion, far from being a civilization (Brubaker, 2017). To borrow from Billig (2017), we argue that the far right’s use of consumer activism also instantiates ‘banal civilizationism’, i.e. in their everyday lives, people draw from mundane and subtle symbolic and material cues to reproduce a shared sense of civilizational identity. Compared with banal nationalism (which, due to nations’ cultural differences, has limited imaginational limits), banal civilizationism enabled the far right to target, mobilize and unite a wider audience (e.g. with Judeo-Christian roots across different nations) against what they framed as the ‘threatening other’ (i.e. Muslims).

Overall, our study contributes to the sociological enquiry not only about Islamophobia and the far right but also, more generally, about the reproduction of collective identities. Using a societal security lens, we showed how non-state actors embarked on defending their group identity, perceived to be under threat by another social group. This underscores the importance of examining social conflicts, power relations and identity dynamics from a societal security perspective. This approach enhances our understanding of security and securitization beyond a state-centric view: although states are accountable for safeguarding the external and internal security of their nations, they are not alone in security discourses and actions. As documented in this study, perceptions of threat can also mobilize citizens to securitize certain social groups (e.g. Muslims) and mundane issues (e.g. food production and distribution), project them as immediate threats, and pressurize their states to urgently address their concerns. Societal security, therefore, brings further complexity to the study of inter-group relationships and power dynamics as the security of one social group may be seen as another group’s insecurity. To better understand conflicts of this kind, future research should examine how and why different forms of prejudice and exclusionary ideologies arise and evolve over time and what tools and mechanisms they use to transmit their agendas and recruit members.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to the three anonymous reviewers and the editor handling this manuscript, Silke Roth, for their very insightful and constructive comments throughout the review process.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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