ROLES OF ISLAMIC SHARIAH SCHOLARS IN THE HALAL ASSURANCE SYSTEM

Abstract

Muslims across the globe adhere to the shariah principles and Islamic shariah scholars are an authority over the Quran and the Hadith. At present, the biggest challenge is decision making in adoption of products with unknown ingredients, undefined process from the scratch up to the point of consumption, and choosing between classical and modern data base. The progress in bio-technology and material science gave birth to synthetic material with unknown ingredients. This brought great concern regarding halalan thayyiban which covers food as well as non-food industry. This research intends to focus only on food industry. As halal (permissible) and thayyib (wholesome) are purely religious concerns, so the industry has to depend on Islamic shariah scholars. They play pivotal role in decision making and in giving shariah verdict on raw material and ingredients in the product. This has been traditionally accepted as the bond of trust and their participation accounts for a greater role so as to strengthen HAS with customer satisfaction. This paper discusses the challenges in engaging, empowering and employing more qualified and competent scholars with knowledge of modern science in order to distribute roles at different levels of HAS. Qualitative method through interviews, and feedback loop was the main instrumental tool for data collection and analysis. A conceptual model is framed and it is found that Islamic Shariah scholars are the main thrust in HAS process so as to build the trust but there is a need of their training with latest technology in order to monitor, evaluate the process and documentation, thus, bridging the gap between traditional and modern data base.