Faint Signs Of Faith Part 5: Muslims Can Find Halal-Friendly Tourism, Lifestyle And Community In Prague

PRAGUE— The streets bustle with a blend of tourists who come from different backgrounds to visit and explore the city. From a distance, the Praha city center looks just as busy, but getting closer and walking around people, one can see how diverse and wide tourism is.

Modestly dressed, covered women, who are either walking with or without company, reflect a presence of a Muslim minority in the city. Such minorities find solace in their accessibility to Middle Eastern, halal food along with tourist hot spots. What’s special about such accessibility is that digital media now promotes “halal tripping” or “halal tourism.”

What is halal?

Halal is a set of practices that Islam allows and stats in the Quran. Halal is usually associated with food, particularly in the way meat is sourced and processed from animals. Halal also refers to foods that don’t contain haram— unlawful or nonpermitted— components such as alcohol, gelatin, pork products, etc. Preserving the Islamic — or Quranic — way to prepare and source food is Muslims’ way to preserve their Islamic teachings and practices.

Farah Shop Meat and Eat in Prague (also named “Farah Halal Grocery & Butcher” online in one place and “Farah Food” in another) is one of the popular spots for the local community, with quality food and authentic cuisine ingredients mostly from Muslim-majority countries like Turkey, Germany, Belgium and Palestine , says Mourad Azzouz, shop keeper at Farah Shop. According to Azzouz, Czechs find a great difference in the quality of the meat they buy from the shop compared to the nonhalal or Middle Eastern shops, as that tends to be cleaner from the blood residue and doesn’t involve animal suffering while slaughtering, according to the sharia.

Farah Shop is a favorite spot for Middle Eastern halal restaurants too. Jaffa Restaurant was founded in 2018 by a Palestinian businessman who wanted to feel at home eating Palestinian Arabic food in Prague.

***A Halal food location, Jaffa Restaurant, in Prague. Photo Credit: Dalal Radwan***

Husein Qasum, who runs the family business with his brother and other family members, relies on neighboring shops like Farah to provide their halal meat and other Arab specialty ingredients and considers his place a spot to enjoy a good meal in the heart of the city center, where people from all backgrounds and countries gather.

The restaurants don’t have official labeling with certificates that state they are halal or halal-friendly. Instead, receipts of merchandise and meat have official halal stamps.

Online halal tour guide

When trying to look up online references for Arab-Middle Eastern food, “halal tourism” or “halal tour guide” pop up. What seems like a new trend on social media and digital platforms is now a label that different platforms claim. They help practicing Muslims navigate a halal-friendly day in the city or a whole alternative lifestyle in foreign countries like the Czech Republic.

Another halal eating location in Prague.
Photo Credit: Dalal Radwan

Halaltrip.com lists a variety of Muslim-friendly destinations, Muslim travel essentials and references to special events. Platforms like HalalBooking.com don’t yet rank the Czech Republic as a halal-friendly travel destination, but Tripadvisor suggests halal-friendly restaurants with a variety of Lebanese, Turkish, Indonesian, Indian, Moroccan and Mediterranean food options.

According to Qasum, up until the early 2000s, the idea of halal food or access to halal services or products in countries like the Czech Republic was nonexistent. The last 10 years have been a game-changer, with more people aware of Muslims living in the country or traveling there and eating and serving halal food.

Qasum, like other Muslim and Arab students, first came to the Czech Republic as a student in the early ‘90s. He first got his university degree and has since then been traveling back and forth between Palestine and Prague. Qasum doesn't believe in halal tourism as a trend; he sees living in a nonreligious country for religious minorities a way of adaptation and survival.

Some halal history

According to Dr. Ibrahim Al-Marashi, associate professor of history at California State University San Marcos, the Czech Republic’s saw its first Muslim presence between the years 964-965, when a Jewish merchant was traveling from Spain. Muslims attempted their first organized community to form an association in the early 30s, yet that failed due to legal matters.

Communist Czechoslovakia’s friendly relationships with Arab governments opened channels of academic opportunities for Arab students coming from Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East, and that's when the country started seeing a growing number of Muslim students. The Center for Muslim Communities was established in 1991 and followed by the establishment of the first mosque in Brno and later recognition of Islam as a religion in 2004, with the Muslim community having access to a governmental subsidy. According to Pew Research Center, Muslims make up 0.2 percent of the Czech Republic’s population.

More Muslims arrived to the country from Bosnia-Herzegovnia, former Soviet countries, and Arab countries, too.

Muslims’ access to a worship place in Prague remains substantially hidden. With more Muslim presence around city center, The Islamic Center of Prague is located within a close distance from the center and consists of a mosque area with two separate rooms for prayer for women and men with their WC’s. Muslims can have easy access for their five daily prayers.

The mosque, though, has no official identification or unique architecture to it so as to avoid vandalism and anti-Muslim hostility, said Dr. Al-Marashi. In addition, religious Muslim sites in Prague are rental properties, which makes their presence temporary and subject to relocation.

Dalal Radwan is a digital media and communication educator from Palestine, where she has taught at a major university. She is a Fulbright alumna, who completed her master’s in journalism at the University of Arizona.

Editor’s Note: This is the fifth installment in a 7-part series reported by 24 young journalists from 16 countries who studied at the European Journalism Institute in Prague in July of 2022. EJI is co-funded and programmed by The Media Project (the parent non-profit of ReligionUnplugged.com) and The Fund for American Studies. EJI 2022 took place at Anglo-American University.