Members of the far-right group in Europe has urged the people to boycott Toblerone – the wildly popular triangular-shaped chocolate bars – over receiving the halal certification for the product.
The Bern, Switzerland-based factory that makes the chocolate, got the certification around eight months ago in April 2018.
A halal designation means that a product’s ingredients and manufacturing process is permissible according to Islamic law. It further confirms that the product does not contain pork or alcohol.
Recently, the far right went furious after discovering that the company is producing chocolates without using the pork, a prohibited item in Islam.
The company has not changed its ingredients for the certification as Toblerone’s 110-year-old recipe already met all of those requirements.
Jörg Meuthen, spokesman for Germany’s far-right AfD party, alerted his Facebook followers on December 17 that the triangular chocolate bar was now halal, with a sarcastic comment about the “Islamization” of Europe.
“Islamization does not take place — neither in Germany nor in Europe,” the AfD’s Jörg Meuthen wrote on social media, expressing her extremist views.
“It is therefore certainly pure coincidence that the depicted, known chocolate variety is now certified as ‘HALAL’,” he added.
Mondelēz, the producer, confirmed that the production process was not altered.
“The certification did not result in any change to our beloved traditional Toblerone original recipe,” Mondelēz said in a statement emailed to CNN. “Due to the inherent nature of Toblerone chocolate its production process essentially meets the halal criteria anyway.”
The Toblerone is not the only halal product as numbers of multinational companies have halal certification for their products as there are two billion Muslim in the world that only eat halal.
Hershey’s Kisses are halal, as are Kit Kats, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Snickers, Twix, and indeed most of Hershey and Mars’s offerings. Even Whatchamacallits are halal.
