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HOME → ZABIHAH.COM IN THE NEWS
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Growing Muslim population impacts Atlanta's food industry - Global Atlanta, January 11, 2008 - "Mr. Amanullah, who said that he grew up eating kosher food because it was easier to find than halal products, added that there has been an explosion of growth in the halal food industry. He estimated that the number of halal businesses in the U.S. has grown from about 200 when he began the Web site five years ago to nearly 4,000 today." ( More here...) |
Ramadan is all about fasting - and food - St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 13, 2007 - "Over the last five years there's been a critical mass of new Muslim businesses that have profoundly changed the culture of Ramadan in America," said Shahed Amanullah, the founder and editor of zabihah.com. "Five years ago, the only congregational aspect of Ramadan would be at a mosque or someone's home. Now the community aspect of the month has shifted to restaurants and other public gathering spots." ( More here...) |
Halal flexes its marketing muscle - Toronto Star, July 22, 2007 - "Halal is the underlying force behind everything that is deemed permissible religiously," explains Texan Shahed Amanullah, the 38-year-old founder of halalapalooza.com. His series of Muslim websites gets 25 million page views a year and lists more than 360 halal restaurants in Toronto alone. "A great by-product of this is there is a huge segment (of people) that wouldn't have kept halal, but now do so because it's easy," Amanullah said. "There's no excuse any more." ( More here...) |
Muslims find more halal restaurants and food providers - Boston Globe, March 21, 2007 - "When Shahed Amanullah started zabihah.com in 1999 with a couple of friends in the San Francisco Bay Area, they listed some 200 local establishments. But diners from across North America sent in reviews of halal restaurants they encountered close to home or while traveling. Indeed, users say the website has been a boon for travelers in unfamiliar cities looking for a halal meal for their family or after a long business meeting." ( More here...) |
Fast-food giants cater to Muslims - Chicago Tribune, January 4, 2007 - "What you're seeing is the impact of the second generation," said Shahed Amanullah, founder of zabihah.com, a Web site that reviews restaurants serving halal. "If you were born and raised here, your ethnic food is American food. This second generation is demanding halal fried chicken, pizzas and Philly subs." ( More here...) |
Online guide helps Muslims on-the-go find Ramadan fare - Religion News Service, October 12, 2006 - "The site was a smash with local Muslims, many of whom e-mailed information about restaurants they had visited. Amanullah reckoned the appetite for an online guide of zabihah restaurants was national, and opened the site to reviews from across the U.S. Today, zabihah.com has almost 18,000 reviews of more than 4,600 restaurants, including about 1,000 from London, Paris, Singapore and other foreign cities." ( More here...) |
In US, Ramadan gets an American twist - Christian Science Monitor, October 6, 2006 - "The Muslim experience in America is one of trying to conform to the way society around us runs," says Shahed Amanullah, who runs zabihah.com, an online guide of restaurants that conform to Islamic dietary restrictions. "In a Muslim country, everybody breaks their fast at the same time, so business conforms to that. But in America, we have to conform to a different schedule." ( More here...) |
Subway featuring halal foods is busy - Dallas Morning News, May 6, 2006 - In a state with one of the largest Muslim populations in the country, restaurant owners and community members say it makes business sense for mainstream restaurants to cater to Muslims. "It's symbolic of our acceptance in the fabric that is America," said [Shahed Amanullah], founder of zabihah.com, a Web site that lists restaurants across the U.S. that serve halal food. ( More here...) |
More menus cater to Muslims - Chicago Sun-Times, April 24, 2006 - "Halal food was considered even just a few years ago as being primarily ethnic, back-home, comfort food," said Shahed Amanullah, 38, an MBA student in Washington, D.C., who runs the Web site zabihah.com, which tracks halal restaurants and grocery stores around the world. These days, said Amanullah, "pretty much every metropolitan area in the country has halal Thai, Chinese, pizza, burgers." When Amanullah started the Web site in 1999, he listed about 200 halal restaurants in the United States, 20 of those in the Chicago area. He now counts 2,500 nationwide and more than 100 in the Chicago area, among them Chinese, Italian and pizza eateries. ( More here...) |
Halal foods more widely available - San Jose Mercury News, November 1, 2005 - They can also consult www.zabihah.com, which is a kind of Zagat Survey of the American Muslim world. Zabihah.com was founded in 1998 by Shahed Amanullah, who lives in Berkeley but currently is studying in Washington, D.C. (Zabihah means that animals are slaughtered according to Islamic rites.) He started the online guide with 20 or 30 halal restaurants and stores in the Bay Area. Friends gradually added to the site, and now it has gone national with nearly 4,000 restaurants and food stores. ( More here...) |
Halal: 'Permitted' food options grow along with our Muslim community - Miami Herald, October 20, 2005 - About 50 area restaurants and grocery stores sell halal items, according to Shahed Amanullah, creator of zabihah.com, a website that reviews halal outlets. Nationwide, the number has grown from just 300 in 1999 to 3,500 today, he said. During Ramadan, which ends Nov. 4, his site claims 4,000 unique users a day. ''Over the last two or three years in particular, there has been demand for halal foods of other types: Mexican, Italian, Philly cheese steak,'' said zabihah.com's Amanullah. "My cultural food is American cultural food.'' ( More here...) |
Teaching them young - Bangkok Post, July 7, 2005 - I browse www.zabihah.com, a site offering information on Muslim food and restaurants in Thailand. It can also be accessed by handphone via mobile.zabihah.com. I could solicit information on halal restaurants in Bangkok, Ayuthaya, Chachoengsao and Nakhon Pathom, Chiang Mai and Phuket. It was of great help. ( More here...) |
The halal way - Dallas Morning News, June 4, 2005, and and Detroit Free Press, July 19, 2005 - "The Muslim consumer population is becoming much more savvy, and the market has grown up around them," said Shahed Amanullah, who runs the Web site zabihah.com, which lists halal restaurants in cities around the world. ("Zabihah" is the word for the type of slaughter that makes meat halal.) "Muslims are starting to demand higher quality." Mr. Amanullah's site started in 1998 with 300 restaurants. Now, it lists more than 3,000 establishments, "everything from Mexican to Brazilian to Philly subs to pizza," he said. "That diversity only happened in the last year or two." Still, many Muslims say the industry has a long way to go to fully serve the needs of America's Muslim community, estimated at anywhere from 2 million to more than 6 million people, and growing quickly. "The halal industry has not reached maturity," Mr. Amanullah said. "There's a market opportunity there for somebody." ( More here...) |
Area Muslims want state to regulate meat markets - Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 18, 2005 - A Web site that tracks U.S. markets and restaurants that sell halal foods, Zabihah.com, reports that 41 restaurants and 28 grocery stores in metro Atlanta serve halal foods. The site's listings have a category called "halal authenticity." Many restaurants are "unverified," but others say "halal sign in window" or "Owners are known Muslims." Karabulut said he buys his meat from the Almadina market in East Lake, the same shop where the Faisthalab family purchases its meats. Almadina is the top-rated metro Atlanta grocer at Zabihah.com. ( More here...) |
A taste for Halal meat - Washington Post, May 2, 2005 - But as the Washington area's Muslim population grows, so do Rababe's moneymaking opportunities. Because the Koran instructs mankind to eat meat that is "halal," the Arabic word for lawful, devout Muslims are willing to pay a premium for the type of product Rababe sells at his Hamzah Slaughter House LLC in Williamsport. These days, more than 140 of the region's restaurants and grocery stores advertise themselves as halal, according to Zabihah.com, a Web site that posts reviews of halal food establishments across the country. ( More here...) |
Keeping kosher, and doing it with some style - New York Times, December 28, 2004 - Seder Olam stands among a cornucopia of sites catering to the needs of niche travelers. Other sites catering to Jews, for example, include TotallyJewishTravel.com and JewishRoutes.com... Muslims can visit Zabihah.com, Halalapalooza.com and Eat-Halal.com for information on halal meals that follow Islamic dietary laws. OneHajj.com, IslamiCity.com, Barakahhajj.com and a host of other sites offer Hajj pilgrimage packages to Saudi Arabia. ( More here...) |
Halal site guides hungry Muslims - BBC News, December 16, 2004 (Click here to listen - Windows Media Player required) - Shahed Amanullah is strolling through the isles of Halalco, a supermarket in Falls Church, Virginia, that specialises in halal products. At the checkout, cashiers ring up groceries from across the Muslim world. "I'm looking for things that sort of meet my very broad palate," says Mr Amanullah. "I've got halal-spiced sausage. I've got Persian yogurt drink, and I've got Indian chutney." Mr Amanullah's family is originally from southern India but he was raised in California. Growing up, there were few halal markets near his home. But he watched as the Muslim community in the US expanded over the years. "About five or six years ago, establishments started popping up that were catering to the Muslim community," he says. "And several friends of mine and I started to try to hunt them down, and look at them, and we were really excited when something would come up, and we would tell our friends about it. "So I decided, wouldn't it be a great idea to establish a website to tell people about them." The result is zabihah.com, a free, searchable listing of halal markets and restaurants. ( More here...) |
Muslims find Bay Area leans toward tolerance - San Francisco Chronicle, September 10, 2004 - So many Muslim-oriented restaurants and food establishments have opened that, in 1999, a Bay Area Muslim engineer and entrepreneur began a Web site, zabihah.com, as a guide. Like craigslist.com, the site has since expanded exponentially -- it now includes restaurants and eateries around the world, and a halalapalooza.com offshoot that lists Muslim-oriented businesses. ("Halal" is Arabic for "permissible.") ( More here...) |
Eid sacrifice ritual latest casualty of BSE - The Globe & Mail, January 13, 2004 - Demand for Canada's live goats normally surges in the weeks before Eid, an Islamic festival in which the faithful cut an animal's neck and divide its meat among family, friends and the poor. That export business halted along with the sale of other ruminants after a case of mad-cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, was discovered in Alberta last May. As the festival of Eid approaches on Feb. 1, some U.S. slaughterhouses and consumers are worrying that they won't find a proper source of the meat known as halal, which is handled according to Islamic rules. "Suddenly you've got all these people looking around for halal meat on local farms," said Shahed Amanullah, owner of Zabihah.com in Oakland, Calif., a consumers' guide to halal meat since 1998. ( More here...) |
The New Halal: Foods that conform to Islamic law find a wider audience - San Francisco Chronicle, September 3, 2003 - In the last five years, there's been an explosion in the number of halal restaurants, because the demand is really increasing," says Shahed Amanullah, a civil engineer who lives in the East Bay and started a Web site four years ago to help fellow Muslims stay on top of the scene. Zabihah.com lists restaurants and markets by region, all over the country, and invites reviews and comments from readers. "I've seen it go from maybe 10 I was aware of in 1999 to almost 100 in the Bay Area. It's just taken off," Amanullah says. "It's very exciting for Muslims born here. That's our palate. When a halal burger joint opens up, that's really exciting." ( More here...) |
Halal food on the road - About.com, August 25, 2003 - Every Muslim who travels or moves to a new city faces the dilemma of finding places to eat - restaurants that serve halal food. Those Muslims who only eat zabihah meat have an especially difficult time finding acceptable local cuisine in an unfamiliar city. Here is a website that comes to our rescue: Zabihah.com! Zabihah.com offers restaurant guides for dozens of cities in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., European countries, as well as new additions such as Japan, New Zealand, and Thailand. In addition, user-submitted reviews give information about whether a listed restaurant is actually good in addition to being halal. This is an excellent resource for Muslims who travel or are relocating to a new area! ( More here...) |
Site Of The Week: www.zabihah.com - Dallas Morning News, July 26, 2003 - For Muslims who want to eat zabihah (conforming to Islamic dietary codes), this site offers 2,500 restaurant reviews from around the world. Reviews, submitted by readers, are honest and detailed. "Just because a restaurant serves halal food doesn't necessarily mean that it's good," the site's authors state. By offering reviews, the site hopes "to improve the dining experience of all Muslims." Muslim diners can download restaurant listings onto a handheld computer. The site offers a word of caution: Some restaurants claim to be halal, but aren't. (In fact, a number of states now have laws making it a crime to sell food falsely labeled as halal.) A search in the Dallas area revealed 23 halal grocery stores and restaurants, including Persian and Middle Eastern eateries as well as Chinese, South Asian and barbecue. Most restaurants have multiple reviews. The site is a useful guide, both to the observant Muslim and the adventurous diner. ( More here...) |
Kosher's Cousin: Halal - East Bay Express, January 15, 2003 - The Arabic word [halal] means "lawful" or "permitted" (as opposed to haram, or "forbidden"). A number of verses in the Koran and in the hadith, sayings or stories of the Prophet Muhammad, set out clear rules about halal, also known as zabihah (Islamically slaughtered) meat. Haram products include swine, blood, carrion, and animals that are dead before the butcher handles them. Zabihah.com, an international online directory of restaurants and markets serving zabihah meat, describes the process: The animal must be slaughtered by "slitting its throat with a very sharp knife to make sure that the three main blood vessels -- but not the spinal cord -- are cut. While cutting the throat of the animal the person has to recite 'Bismillah Allah-u-Akbar.' ( More here...) |
Still Life, With Skewer - East Bay Express, September 12, 2001 - The Web makes my job so easy. I haven't had to call a restaurant for directions since I started using Mapquest. Now I browse newsgroups for tips, check for addresses and phone numbers online, and even double-check entre wordings and prices when restaurants post their menus. So I decided to offer the Internet a challenge: finding Afghan restaurants in the East Bay. Of course, it took five minutes tops. I quickly stumbled -- Web searches always feel like "stumbling," don't they? -- upon Zabihah.com, a directory of halal (the Islamic counterpart to kosher) restaurants across the United States. It listed about ten names of places in the Bay Area, most in the South Bay. ( More here...) |
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