Global halal food industry is said to be worth over  $600 billion.  Japanese food and tourism companies are slowly starting to tap into this huge market for halal food and other halal consumer products for the Muslims all over the world.  As the Japanese population is aging, both the public and private sectors have started thinking of ways to offer halal products to the Muslims living in Japan and elsewhere.

The recent surge in the demand for halal food products in japan is attribbuted to the following .

• Muslim population in the country is slowly but steadily increasing
• Muslim consumers are becoming vocal
• More and more Muslims are visiting japan for business, studies or other purposes
• Due to the sluggishness of the domestic Japanese economy, Japanese food companies are trying to grab

Recently, a member of parliament approached few Muslim organizations based in Tokyo to get basic information about the concept and find out ways Japanese companies could cater to the necessities of the Muslims living in the country. A non-profit organization recently planned to hold the first-ever halal food fair in Fukuoka.

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Nathan Lean, author of the forthcoming study The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims, calls for a campaign to expose the poisonous anti-Muslim ideology promoted by the likes of Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Frank Gaffney, which provided the inspiration for Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik.

Lean writes: "Society has a responsibility to counter these individuals with overwhelming overtures of pluralism – and to systematically push the fearmongers out of public discourse. The consequences of inaction are grave. Just as Bin Laden had several copycats, so too may Breivik. In his closing statement, the Norway killer said that, 'My brothers in the Norwegian and European resistance movements are sitting and watching this case while they plan new attacks'."

New York Daily News, 9 July 2012

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