Construction of White Victimhood through Halal Certification: A critical

Discourse Analysis on Boycott against Halal Products in Non-Muslim

Countries

Abstract

When it comes to the formation of national identity, abjection ontologically sets the boundaries
of cultural citizenship. Being a Muslim or an immigrant serves as abject in relation to Western
identity credentials and whiteness since they both stand for seemingly contradictory yet
functionally essential position of radical other. In other words, they embody the contradictory
desire to be accepted as Western but also to be different and unassimilated.

While there are certain groups, including Muslim minorities, and immigrants, women, and
LGBT+ individuals that are traditionally abjected and marginalized because of their race, gender,
sexuality, class, nationality; now the groups who are historically hegemonic, including white
supremacists, Christian nationalists have started to claim the status of the outcast. In other
words, these groups generally associated with the dominant culture have increasingly and
aggressively started to demand victim status to dilute and weaken the traditionally administered
and enforced markers of marginalization.

In this respect, ongoing anti-halal campaigns to prevent or at least restrict halal certification in
the UK and Australia bear significant importance concerning the negotiation between the poles
of abject and whiteness.

This study will investigate ongoing anti-halal in the UK and Australia to reveal which kinds of
discursive formations and strategies are incorporated by the groups normally associated with the
dominant culture to seek sympathy not as a perpetrator but as a perpetrator victim of an allegedly
oppressive majority of minorities. With this aim, this research will employ a critical discourse
analysis by using the documents published on websites dedicated to the anti-halal cause, posts on
Facebook group pages to boycott halal products, documents on official websites of the far-right
political actors in the UK, and Australia, including the For Britain, and Q Society of Australia
between 2015, and 2020.

Introduction 

The divisive discourse of far-right actors is a pitfall set for risk social cohesion and democracy.
Their divisive and prejudiced messages can ignite intergroup tensions, and conflict can harm the
vulnerable, discriminated, under-represented groups, including Muslim minorities, immigrants,
and LGBT+ individuals. Far-right movements with policies primarily focusing on nationalism
and immigration continue to attract significant numbers of voters among youth and the working
class and women and gay and lesbian rights advocating groups by recruiting politics of gender
and sexuality to present themselves as progressive. In an attempt to create a new type of
nationalism, they engage in specific areas of interest, including women's, sexual minorities, and
animal rights, which have been considered a major concern for immigrant communities,
particularly from Muslim countries. In addition to their re-branding white supremacist movement
also utilize narratives of white victimhood to mainstream the white supremacist thoughts. 
The terrorist attack in the United States on 9/11 and terrorist attacks in Europe intensified the
corrosive stereotyping of Muslim minorities in the West and resulted in an increasing trend of
exclusion and marginalization. With the rising ultra-right in Europe, including the UK and
Australia, a discourse that perceives Muslims as a threat to modern Western life has gained
currency. Recently, halal industry, and more specifically, halal meat has become a new target.
Halal meat is still a matter of debate in the Western media as a signifier of "Muslim cruelty," and
the campaigns calling for a public boycotting of Halal-certified brands to remove or restrict Halal
certification of food products in the UK, and Australia are on the rise. With a primary focus
brutally of halal slaughter, anti-halal proponents also claim that non-Muslims in their counties
are being forced to eat halal foods as most food selling at the groceries is secretly halal, and the
concept of halal is being used as a tool for Islamization of the Western countries. The pattern of
carefully crafted victim status present in the campaign provides a base to conduct a comparative
study to reveal how Muslim minorities who are traditionally abjected and marginalized are
discursively situated as oppressive minorities.
This project seeks to outline how the white supremacist discourse utilizes the phenomenon of
victimhood as a recruiting tool by examining the anti-halal campaigns in the UK and Australia.
Organized primarily through social media, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, anti-halal activism
consists of several websites, including Boycott Halal, Halal Choices, Facebook group pages:
Boycott Halal Certification in Australia (ID: 693361674081960), Boycott & Ban Halal Slaughter
in Australia (ID: 489562921216259), Ban Halal in Great Britain (ID: 928924730485681),
Boycott Halal - UK (ID: 187766907922898), and Kirralie Smith NSW. In addition to social
media campaigns, party policies, and press releases of far-right pollical parties, including For
Britain in the UK and Q Society of Australia on halal issues, will also be analyzed in order to
spot similarities and differences between online grassroot movements and their official party
discourse. 

The Aim and Significance of the Study:

Eating as a daily activity is embedded with a lot of cultural and religious signifiers. Donna
Gabbacia stated that choices people make about eating are rarely trivial or accidental (2006) as
availability of a particular food can represent both sense of belonging, attachment to a
community, or generate stereotypes. Although, the concept of halal has expanded from food to
cosmetics and tourism over the decades; halal food, especially meat, has a central place in the
debate on halal and it is also primary target of anti-halal campaigns. On the surface, the main
concern of these campaigns are freedom of informed choice and protection of animal rights,
however, the discourse dominates these campaigns constitutes a form of cultural racism that
constructs Muslims as an opposing subject against Western identity credentials. Although there
is a large volume of literature on Islamophobia and anti- halal campaigns, how the white
supremacist discourse utilizes the phenomenon of victimhood as a recruiting tool within the
context of halal is generally under researched.

Since it is no longer possible for white supremacist movements to survive with old-fashioned
racist and xenophobic discourse, they develop new strategies to repackage and mainstream their
ideas. Embracing the victim status and using it as a recruitment tool is one of these strategies. In
addition to expansion of halal industry in the West, there several other cases including White
Lives Matter rallies, anti-trans campaigns, where white supremacist groups who are normally
associated with the dominant culture seek sympathy not as a perpetrator but a victim. The victim
discourse present in all these campaigns are similar in important ways and result in similar
consequences as they all present the white people as the victims of oppressive minorities and
encourage them to reassert their rightful authority. On the other hand, what differentiates anti-
halal campaigns from White Lives Matter rallies and anti-trans campaigns is the central place of
food and cuisine in collective belonging and its symbolic value to our sense of identity, at both
individual and group level (Fischler 1988).

Thus, investigation anti-halal campaigns in terms of discursive formations and strategies

incorporated by white supremacist groups to present themselves as victim within the context of
halal has potential to expose the danger of victimization discourse with immediate tangible
consequences.

In this regard, this thesis aims to determine whether or not the white supremacist discourse
utilizes the phenomenon of victimhood as a recruiting tool in anti-halal campaigns in the UK and
Australia. If so, how does the white supremacist discourse employs white victimhood as a
recruiting tool within the context of online anti-halal campaigns in the UK and Australia in order
to rearticulate ad rationalize cultural racism?

We explore how the law is at work in the case of halal shaping social worlds of meaning
institutionally, that is, law in the everyday lives of Islamic organizations, states and companies.
Both trademarks and halal logos represent legal and institutional forms that struggle to establish
and legitimate authoritative meanings in public spheres. Consequently, the legal protection of
halal forms creates new relations of power in contemporary cultural politics.
Consumerism and Halal

The ethnic and religious diversity in the Global North countries has forced to the food industry to
strategically re-align their products with the dietary preference of different groups such as Asian,
Indian, Mexican, Vegetarian, Jewish, and Muslim communities. The desire for forging their lives
by Islamic rules and consuming halal products results in observant Muslims, especially those
living in the global North, to financially (and socially) engage with the neoliberal capitalist
market. The expansion of the Halal market reflects the complex processes though marginalized
groups invest in capitalist engagements to move towards the core in the neoliberal market
economy. For this reason, a brief review on consumerism will be useful to understand the
importance of demand for halal, and calls for boycotting halal products. 

A neo-liberal approach to consumerism tends to focus on consumer empowerment (Shankar,

Cherrier, and Canniford 2006). Such an approach considers consumers as empowered and free
actors making their own consumption choices to protect their rights as consumers. In line with
the neo-liberal approach, people, as consumers, are supposedly emancipated through the market
and consumption (Firat, and Venkatesh 1995; Trentmann 2007). 

On the other hand, the marketing theory manages consumerism as a critique against the
'irrational' consumption practices of autonomous individuals. (Strasser 1999; Barr 2004; Cooper
2004, 2005; de Coverly, McDonagh, O'Malley, and Patterson 2008). The marketing theory
underlines the problems associated with the throw-away society and excessive consumption and
defines consumerism as a problem of "attitudes, and behavior" (Cooper 2004: 443). As a reaction
to the marketing theory's view of consumers as manipulated actors (Cooper 2005), Consumer
Culture Theory (CCT) defines consumerism as a form of social agreement where a struggle takes
place among various actors over the symbolic, and material resources which they depend on
(Arnould, and Thompson 2005, 2007; Peñaloza, and Price 1993; Peñaloza 2001; Murray, 2002;
Kozinets, and Handelman 2004; Cova, Kozinets, and Shankar 2007; Thompson, and Coskuner-
Balli 2007; Slater 8).

An increasing number of individuals seek to act beyond their immediate interests as consumers
and consider the impact of their consumption on the wellbeing of others. Marketing strategies to
create differentiation by ethical, cultural, and religious considerations target Muslim consumers,
but their decision to go halal can be interpreted as a recognition of the Muslim community as
socially desirable consumers with increased public visibility and agency to influence the global
marketplace. Thus, the notion of consumer citizenship (Lang, and Gabriel 2005), consumer
empowerment (Shankar et al. 2006; Wright, Newman, and Dennis 2006), consumer agency and
emancipation (Murray 2002), and consumer tribes (Cova et al., 2007), and consumer resistance
in the marketplace (Peñaloza, and Price 1993) is regarded as a legitimate form of empowerment
(Carrigan et al. 2004).  

Nevertheless, this is a two-way process, and Muslims are not the only group reflecting their
values and beliefs on their consumption choices. With the proliferation of halal-certified
products in non-Muslim countries, campaigns for boycotting halal products have become popular
in several western countries. In addition to the far-right political movements’ official anti-halal
policies, several online groups organized primarily through Facebook demand a halal ban in their
countries.

The book by Yiannis Gabriel and Tim Lang titled “The Unmanageable Consumer” provides five
descriptions for consumerism: (1) a moral doctrine in developed countries as a vehicle for
freedom, power, and happiness; (2) an ideology of conspicuous consumption as a mechanism
that establishes social, and status distinction; (3) an economic ideology for global development
as an essential requirement of capitalist accumulation; (4) a political ideology that safeguards
consumer rights, and (5) a social movement seeking to promote and protect the rights of
consumers (8).

It is argued that consumerism as an ideology attaches a discursive power to consumption

(Thompson 2004), underlines different layers of power, multiple market actors from state to
individuals, and social factors that affect consumption practices. All these studies are focusing
on how economic power and consumption are translated into an agency is essential to explain
halal’s role as an empowerment tool for Muslim communities in the West and why white
supremacists have targeted it.

Thus, self-perceived collective victimhood manifested in the narratives in the anti-halal

campaigns requires investigation of several concepts, including abjection, empowerment,
privilege, and stigma.

For example, in their article titled “When the burger becomes halal: a critical discourse analysis
of privilege, and marketplace inclusion,” Guillaume D. Johnson et al. conducted a discourse
analysis to reveal how the notion of privilege and stigma within the marketplace is manifested as
a reaction to market inclusion strategies by analyzing the responses over a popular French burger
chain, Quick’s, decision to go halal (2017). Believing that a focus only on stigmatized consumer
experiences would further reinforce the privileged positionality of non-stigmatized consumers,
Johnson et al. apply Michel Foucault’s conceptualization of power and privilege into the halal
debate to show how discourse operates through narratives to defend and challenge a particular
privilege in order to provide a theoretical framework. Although they link privileged
positionalities in the marketplace with Islamophobic discourse over the halal burger, they
disregard the meaning of availability of goods, what they want, and need, and how power and
privilege operate within the marketplace as an instrument for empowering the stigmatized
consumers. Self-proclamation of victim status in Islamophobic discourse against the halal burger
is another phenomenon disregarded in their research.

In this regard, Lejla Voloder’s article titled “The “Mainstreaming” of Halal: Muslim Consumer-
Citizenship in Australia” is among few studies focusing on the concept of consumer citizenship
and sense of belonging within the concept of halal. Investigating the relationship between the
expansion of the Halal market in Australia and the sense of belonging for Australian-Muslims,
she defines the availability of Halal products in the Australian market as a marker of economic
and social inclusion Australian-Muslims. Consumerism, as discursive power, recognizes the
consumer’s role as an actor in reproducing the consumer culture and consumerism itself. While
the consumers have been traditionally assigned a passive role as an object, the CCT portrays as
an active agent who cannot necessarily challenge the mass market infused by the discourse of
consumerism through consumption (Kozinets and Handelman 2004). In the context of halal,
consumerism is researched to determine the factors influencing purchasing intentions of both
Muslim and non-Muslim costumers and the strategies to be followed by the companies to access
the halal market (Bonneetal 2007; Alam and Sayuti 2011; Wilson and Liu 2011; Ladaetal 2009;
Talibetal 2016).

While Bonneetal defined a positive personal attitude of Muslims behind the consumption of halal
meat in France (2007); Alam and Sayuti employed the theory of planned behavior to identify the
food purchasing intentions of Malaysian customers (2011). Focusing on the challenges
associated with the concept of halal, Wilson and Liu indicated the importance of constructing
notable and engaging brands for Halal-conscious customers in their purchasing decision (2011).
Izberk-Bilgin et al. offer five strategies for companies with the intention to enter the halal
market: (1) Embrace a holistic meaning of halal by taking fair trade, organic agriculture, animal
welfare, food safety, and ecological economics into consideration; (2) Know the halal rules, and
rulers which refers to the governmental, and non-governmental actors; institutional power
hierarchies, and struggles within the halal industry, and among countries; (3) Engage in dialogue
with halal policymakers, especially with the religious authorities; (4) Navigate consumer
backlash creatively such as avoiding eye-catching halal logos in the packaging in order not to
attract unwanted attention, and (5) Build an integrated halal approach (2016).

Despite the large volume of literature on halal, marketing, and consumption, only a few pieces of
research focus on the symbolic meaning of halal for the Muslim community in the West. For
example, in his article titled “Acculturation of Halal Food to the American Food Culture through
Immigration, and Globalization: A Literature Review,” by Abdelhadi Halawa discusses the
acculturation of halal food into American food culture (2018). Defining ethnic food restaurants
and stores as an attempt to acculturate and contribute to the new host culture, he acknowledges
halal food as a significant symbol for both their faith and identity. However, he disregards some
essential topics which can directly be linked to his discussion. Due to his decision to exclude all
these issues, including halal and Islamophobia, his study falls short of establishing a link
between acculturation of halal into American culture and its effects on the everyday life of
Muslims in the US.

In addition to studies on halal marketing and consumption, there is a large volume of literature
on halal and Islamophobia, excessive commercialization of the concept of halal, and
nationalization of Islam via authority linked to the power involved in halal certification.
However, anti-halal campaigns are generally investigated as a part of Islamophobia. On the other
hand, the employment of victimhood as a recruiting tool in anti-halal campaigns is generally
overlooked and unresearched. For this reason, the following part of this literature review goes
through narratives, norms, and other relevant knowledge of the modern white supremacist
movement to see how they embrace the victim status and adopt methods of stigma management
as a means for appealing to the masses.

White Victimhood and Stigma Management

This section will investigate literature on modern white supremacist and far-right movements,
the stigma management strategies, narratives, and other relevant knowledge on this subject.
However, the aim of this section is not limited to provide an overview on white supremacist
movements and reveal their strategies to craft victim status but it will provide a base to
contextualize the phenomenon of victimhood as a recruiting tool in anti-halal campaigns.

cksmdklfmdlkf

According to Holstein, and Miller, the formulation of victimization as an interactional

phenomenon is important because of its potential to offer alternative and innovative possibilities
for studying the social processes through which persons become “victims.” Victims are the
persons who are believed to be unjustly harmed or damaged and essentially innocent; thus, they
evoke sympathy (Berbrier 2000, Holstein, and Miller 1990). Holstein and Miller also further
underline that how someone becomes a victim is radically transformed when the notion of
victimhood is analytically interpreted as an interactional activity that underpins victims’ reality
status. In that case, the victimization is imagined as a descriptive practice and an interpretive and
representational process for assigning victim status to ourselves and others. “Describing someone
as a victim is more than merely reporting about a feature of the social world; it constitutes that
world.” (1997). In other words, although the notion of victimhood ignites compassion and
sympathy for the victim, it is also associated with passivity and forgiveness.

While there are certain groups, including immigrants, women, and LGBT+ individuals, who are
traditionally victimized because of their race, gender, sexuality, class, nationality; now the
groups who are historically hegemonic, including white supremacists, Christian nationalists have
started to claim the status of the outcast. In other words, these groups normally associated with
the dominant culture have increasingly and aggressively started to demand victim status to dilute,
weaken the traditionally administered and enforced markers of marginalization.

There are five main themes in the narratives of the white supremacists to legitimize their victim
claims: (1) white people are victims of discrimination (2) rights of white people are abolished (3)
white people are subjected to stigmatization and denied of pride of being white, (4) as a result of
all of these, white people suffer low self-esteem, (5), and they are facing the risk of racial
elimination. Presenting scientific arguments with an emphasis on fundamental genetic
differences among human races, being deeply interested in observing and respecting
“differences” among peoples, and most importantly, hijacking anti-racism discourse to claim that
white people are the ones who need protection (Berbrier 1999, 2000) are also among the tactics
deployed frequently.

Conspiracy theories such as Great Replacement or Eternal Jew, which are prevalent among the
new racists, fuel the feeling of being under siege because of the changing social norm. (Dobratz,
and Shanks-Meile 1997; Berbrier 1999; Futrell, and Simi 2017). The modern white supremacist
movements, which are aware that they are stigmatized, and the stigma attached to them, creates a
barrier in front of their goal of advancing their ideology and reaching new followers just like any
other social movement (Futrell and Simi 2017).

Thus, as a coping mechanism with this stigma, they re-brand their thoughts and ideas to
legitimize themselves. Betty Dobratz and Stephanie Shanks-Meile define this new type of white
supremacists who claim victimhood status and use this stigmatized identity as a recruitment tool
as "the new racists" (1997).

Erving Goffman defines stigma as the situation of a person who fails to conform to standards that
society calls normal, thus disqualified from full social acceptance (1986). Self-perceived
collective victimhood is a fundamental aspect of managing the stigma associated with white
racism (Berbrier 1998) and a useful tool for blaming an alleged victimizer, namely non-whites,
immigrants, leftists, and liberals, for the responsibility for their problems (Gubrium and Holstein
1997).

The methods used by the new racist are quite similar to what Goffman defines as "normification"
-- an effort made by the stigmatized individual to present himself as an ordinary person" (1986).
In compliance with Goffman's description, modern white supremacists are repackaging racist
narratives into a digestible form (Berbrier 1999) instead of completely embracing or denying the
label of racists. In this way, self-proclamation of the outcast or victim status has been
instrumentalized by the far-right movements to mainstream their ideas and expand their
recruitment pool.

The question if there is a connection between the white supremacist narratives and conservative
rhetoric is not the subject of this project. However, the involvement of conservative movements
in collective defensive actions as a response to their perceived decrease in their levels of power
and influence (McVeigh 1999) is not something new. Moreover, contemporary white
supremacists place a strong emphasis on systematic attacks of the mainstream society to
denigrate and discriminate the white people. According to them, liberals, leftists, and minorities
are supporters and preparators of discrimination against white individuals (Berbrier 1999). For
instance, policies aiming to advance the rights of minorities, women, and LGBT are portrayed as
discriminatory actions against whites and why incompetent non-whites are chosen over
competent whites (Shanks-Meile, and Dobratz 1991; Blazak 2001). According to Adams and
Roscingo one of the main concerns of modern white supremacist organizations is the possibility
of becoming a numerical minority. This fear is manifested in the rhetoric representing whites as
victims of systematic governmental, legal, and societal abuses (2005). These so-called systematic
attacks and societal abuses serve to form a "siege mentality" among white supremacists, which
allows the society to define the world into simple, and manageable terms of us vs. them prepares
the society for the worst, and establish a strong social identity (Bar-Tal 2012, 998).

Siege mentality, as described by Bar-Tal refers to a shared societal belief that "the rest of the
world has highly negative intentions towards one's own society or that one's own society is
surrounded by a hostile world" (2012, 997). Although Bar-Tal developed his theory to describe
societies characterized societal belief about the siege, including Soviet society immediately after
Bolshevik Revolution, Jews society in Israel, South African White society prior to the
elimination of apartheid, its functions would be beneficial to describe the white supremacist
narrative of being under siege. It is very likely for a society feeling under siege to develops
negative attitudes accompanied by feelings of xenophobia and chauvinism towards other
societies. Lack of trust, and suspicion to outsiders, the establishment of internal mechanisms to
unify and mobilize its members, and risk of taking a course of action considered extreme and
unacceptable can be listed as consequences of ascribing to siege belief (Bar-Tal 2012). The
rhetoric of being under siege is an essential step for establishing outcast or victim status by white
supremacists.

Thus, as a result of discrimination against white people, white supremacists alleged that white
people are denied the rights granted to the immigrants and non-white, including their own culture
(Berbrier 2000). According to white supremacists, those who express any pride in their race will
be labeled as racists, bigots, and haters, and also stigmatized, and the frustration over denial of
pride is the backbone of their victimization claims. White supremacists argue that the stigma
attached to the expression of pride for racial identity, which is actually necessary for a racial
group to survive, results in low self-esteem, and alienation among whites. Reframing racism
from this perspective, exaggerating the injuries inflicted by the system against the whites and
underlining their innocence is central to any articulation of victimization (Holstein and Miller
1990).

The aim of this strategy is to present any hate or resentment directed to the other as a logical and
justified consequence of discrimination that whites allegedly experience (Berbrier 2000). In
addition to justify their hateful narrative against the others, this kind of strategy also implicitly
denies negative intent (Sykes and Matza 1957) and provides a reasonable ground for their
innocence.

Masquerading racism as an advocacy effort is a strategy employed by modern white

supremacists to make their arguments tolerable and more digestible for those who would
normally disagree with extremist views (Omi and Winant 2013; Robertson 1974).

"Most frequently what is presented is an abstract argumentation that hits affectively laden
buzzwords believed to resonate with the contemporary value system: for example, heritage,
preservation, culture, survival, and discrimination. White supremacist rhetoric is designed
precisely to speak very abstractly about pride, and heritage preservation, and as little as possible
concretely about hatred for others or discomfort with a difference" (Berbrier 2000).

For developing a proper understanding, the white supremacist rhetoric about victimization, it is
necessary to understand how the image of minorities has been defined through the fear of the
other. For this reason, a short review of the notions of abjection, empowerment, privilege, and
visibility will be included in this literature review.

Privilege, Empowerment and Abjection

As the rhetoric of white victimhood about halal food is constructed over abjection of the
minorities, and entitlement of their historical privilege, this section will focus on the concepts of
privilege, abjection, and empowerment through food. Eating as a daily biological activity is not
heavily influenced by social and religious norms, but also monitored and regulated by governments,
states, international organizations and multinational corporations. The ways in which food prepared,
consumed and even distribute manifest cultural processes (Montanari xxi), mark boundaries
between social classes, nations, cultures, genders, religions (Curtin 4), and define insiders and outsiders as
a central component of the sense of collective belonging (Fischler 1988, Vester 2). While
food can reinforce social relations and cultural norms, and acts as social 'glue' (Quandt et
al 2001), it also constitutes one of most elementary and most archaic form of
abjection (Kristeva 2). In the Powers of Horor, Kristeva developed the notion of abject,
which refers to an impulse to reject what disturbs identity, system, order (4) via a breakdown in
meaning triggered by the distinction between subject and object or between self and other.
According to Kristeva, the abject exists at the very moment of separation of the subject from the
mother and the realization of the boundary between "me" and the other (13). While Lacan's the
objet petit a (object of our desire) which allows a subject to coordinate their desires by giving
access to the symbolic order of meaning, Kristeva locates the abject before entering into a place
the symbolic order, and where meaning collapses (2). Defining abject as the eruption of the Real
into our lives, she associates it with the subject's rejection of death, not only the knowledge of
death but the actual traumatic experience of facing your own death.

According to her, "Abjection preserves what existed in the archaism of pre-objectal relationship,
in the immemorial violence with which a body becomes separated from another body in order to
be—maintaining that night in which the outline of the signified thing vanishes, and where only
the imponderable affect is carried out. To be sure, if I am affected by what does not yet appear to
me as a thing, it is because laws, connections, and even structures of meaning govern and
condition me (10). As primal repression, abject also marks the separation between human and
animal or animalism, which were imagined as representatives of sex, and murder (Kristeva 12).
Thus, the breakdown in the meaning, anything disturbing the identity, system, and order, recalls
this primal repression and fragility of the law (4). On a cognitive level, the way in which we
construct identity, the relationship between the and language, and our fears of foreign are shaped
through our insights produced by the abject, for her, the abject is that which opposes the I (3).

Food becomes abject only if it is a border between two distinct entities or territories. A boundary between
nature and culture, between the human and the non- human.

food that is treated with fire is polluting and must be surrounded with a series of taboos. It is as if fire,
contrary to what hygienist conceptions posit, far from puri- fying, pointed to a contact, to organic food's
meddling with
the familial and the social. The virtual impurity of such food comes close to excremential abjection,
which is the most strik- ing example of the interference of the organic within the social. The fact remains
nevertheless that all food is liable to defile. Thus the Brahmin who surrounds his meal and his food with
very strict regulations is less pure after eating than before. Food in this instance designates the other (the
natural) that is opposed to the social condition of man and penetrates the self s clean and proper body. In
other respects, food is the oral object (the ab- ject) that sets up archaic relationships between the human
being

To Ahmed, food is a matter of disgust not only because of its taste and
texture, it is the fear of contamination that provokes the nausea of disgust reactions. Defining
food as a sign of human vulnerability since it is something taken into the body, Ahmed notes our instinct for
survival makes us let what is ‘not us’ in; in other word, we need to open ourselves to the otherness (83).
Miller also points out that idea of contamination is generally used when someone tries to prevent a
particular practice by employing disgust as argument. In this case, their primary motivation is to protect
themselves and the society being contaminated by that practice (9). In a similar way, with reference to
Menninghaus, Nussbaum defines disgust as as a “crisis of self-assertion against unassimilable otherness, and
underlines that disgust is about the borders of the body (88).
For Verter, the differences between the edible and the inedible, and the desirable and the disgusting are
subjected to change as they are culturally constructed (1).

In this regard, the central place given to halal food, especially meat and halal slaughter method in
anti-halal campaigns

While many of the stories related to us in interviews have happy endings, there are
many others involving abuse and even mild violence by ‘Australians’ offended by the
smell or the sight of a particular dish. One Lebanese I interviewed described how he
used to find his lunch box tipped in the rubbish bin until he decided ‘to do what others
did and order a sandwich’. At another level, it is well known that many Anglo-
Australians from the gold rush era well into the 1950s, feared migrant food, especially
Asian food, because it was thought to contain unknown diseases. A Lebanese woman
from Bathurst said that in 1943 a co-worker in a dress making factory told the boss that
she saw ‘things moving in her food’ but the boss told the woman ‘that she was an idiot’.

that cuisine is a central part of the cultural life and imagination of diasporic populations. These
scholars have developed important theories on the ways by which food can function as a crucial
transnational link between the diaspora and its homeland. in exploring the imgration cultural
hybridity and food in conjunction, these scholars have shown that cuisine plays a central role in
the ways with which immigrant groups are racialized, how ethnicity and (trans)national identity
are imagined and how notions of belonging are both affirmed and contested through
transnational food cultures. (Mannur 118, Xu 28)

Different cultural and religious ways of preparing food, as well as consuming it caused conflict
within this social setting, which made them feel more isolated. The experience of living in these
centres had changed their normal social context of mealtimes and of preparing and enjoying the
food within their own cultural environment with people of their own ethnic group, language,
religion and locality. This accentuated the alien nature and separateness of their lived experience
as forced migrants and the loss of control they had over the most basic of human activity.

Isolation and dislocation in relation to unfamiliar foods can be illustrate

A migrant individual, or group, adapting to food habits and norms of the new host culture is an
indicator of cultural distance, which has been associated with psychological distress and ill-
health (Williams, 1993).

This section will seek the sources behind white supremacist narrative pride, and heritage
preservation, hatred for others or discomfort with a difference.

The imaginary threat of invasion by the other and the symbolic fear of halal have a central place
construction of victim narrative in anti-halal campaigns. It is argued that hostile reactions can be
traced to a complex interplay between old phobias and new fantasies, which brings us to Julia
Kristeva's concept of abject, and Jacques Lacan's objet petit a (object of our desire).

dmsklfmsdfms

By its nature, the abject is marginalized. When the fear of the other is reflected on groups or
people who are pushed out fringe or stigmatized because of their differences, they may be seen
to represent a threat that eventually legitimates their exclusion from society. Thus, the
relationship between the abject and the idea of marginalization has urged theorists such as
Georges Bataille to contemplate the social dimension of abjection.
For Bataille, abjection derives from and contributes to more extensive operations of sovereign
subjectification and disempowerment of certain groups as any oppressive ruling class has to have
its abject. Other among the masses of the oppressed in order to prove itself as justly sovereign
( 9). He also further that despite the fact that they constitute an internal threat, the waste
populations created by the disciplinary forces of sovereignty and the processes of inclusion and
exclusion are indispensable for the system, which requires this surplus to both constitute the
boundaries and legitimate its power. So, they are trespassing on the center of public life as
objects of disgust, and the degree of exclusion from the society depends on the degree that they
are 'disinherited [from] the possibility of being human' (Bataille 11).
To understand this new racist ideology invested in victimhood, we must explore the relationship
between power and privilege. In line with Bataille's argument about the role of disciplinary
forces of sovereignty in the processes of inclusion, and exclusion, Naila Kaber puts a particular
emphasis on disempowerment while defining the empowerment process. Empowerment is a
process by which those who have been denied the ability to make choices acquire such an ability;
however, each person who has the freedom and ability to make strategic life choices cannot be
considered as "empowered" if they were not disempowered in the first place, she argues (2010).

Empowerment is defined as enhancing an individual's or group's capacity of freedom in making

choices, and taking action on their own lives, and transform them into desired outcomes (Alsop,
Bertelsen, and Holl, and 2006; Narayan 2005). The literature dealing with empowerment usually
uses empowerment as an umbrella term which refers to more than one kind of phenomenon and
does not differentiate it as a process that occurs in people's lives or professional intervention in
which an external change agent, a state, or an organization involved in a planned change process,
and encourages such a process. In this proposed study, empowerment will be defined as an
outcome of multiple agentive actions that gain autonomy and transformation.

In this regard, the interaction between agency and opportunity structure is an essential
component of the empowerment process for this study. While Sen (1985) defines agency as what
a person is free to do and achieve in pursuit of whatever goals or values he or she regards as
essential ( 203), Ibrahim and Alkire interpret empowerment as the expansion of agency (2007)
which can be exercised in different spheres, domains, and levels. Societal structures that people
live in and which can shape, increase, or constrain the exercise of agency denote these spheres.
In these realms, a person can be defined as a civic actor in the state, a social actor within the
society, and an economic actor in the market. (Alsop, Bertelsen, and Holl, and, 2006). The
domains refer to different realms of life where people can exercise agency. Its manifestation in
different areas of life, such as consumption choices, engagement of the labor market, access to
education and health, and freedom of mobility, reveals the degree of its effectiveness. (Mason
1998; Malhotra, and Mather 1997; Malhotra et al. 2002). Lastly, the agency can be exercised at
different levels: micro (household), meso (community), macro (state or country, etc.). Although
each level has different skills and practices for exercising agency, some of these skills can be
transferred to different levels.

Empowerment or disempowerment of certain groups is closely related to the other groups that
they are interacting with, the system of norms, values, and beliefs of a society (Narayan 2005),
and it is hard to measure the outcomes of the empowerment process. At this point, an
investigation on the concept of empowerment also requires investigation of theories on power as
it is an integral part of the discussion on empowerment. The Prince by Nicollò Machiavelli and
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes are considered as the point of departure for modern thinking about
power. While Machiavelli offers strategic and decentralized thinking about power, and
organization, Hobbes's definition of power, as a hegemony, a centralized concept focused on
sovereignty (Clegg 1989). With a Hobbesian approach to power, Max Weber (1947) defined
power as a factor of domination based on economic or authoritarian interests (Merton 1957).
Following Weber's approach, Robert Dahl (1961) focused on understanding ruling elites (Mills
1956; Hunter 1953). The taxonomy of power as a process in which people gain power over
(resisting manipulation), the power to (creating new possibilities), power with (acting in a
group), and power from within (enhancing self-respect and self-acceptance) is offering a useful
scale to measure its effects (Ibrahim, and Alkire, 2007; Rowlands 1997).

The writings of Michel Foucault, on the other hand, traced the historical transition from legal
power which operates openly and can be very effective despite the resistance of the subject
(1980) to modern forms of disciplinary power, which is invisible, and difficult to detect before
encountering resistance (1982). A Foucauldian perspective claims that the sovereign sets the
boundaries of power and determines the norms by which people are judged within those limits of
power and whether they are included or excluded in society.

On the other hand, disempowerment does not merely equal invisibility. The visibility takes place
mostly or entirely outside of the individual's control, such as representations, narratives, and
images of a Muslim in western media detached from the feelings of the represented people,
because the latter is just seen, and represented, but have no say on their image.

Foucault also describes visibility as a trap in his thesis on the insurgence of the disciplinary
society; according to him being seen, and watched entails subjugation, the imposition of
conducts, and means of control. Describing panoptic disciplinary apparatus of power as the most
distinctive characteristic of the modern Western society, he argues that the goal of these
disciplinary processes of nineteenth-century institutions was to discourage deviation and
perversions among the population, 'reforming' deviant criminals into normalcy so that they could
become useful to society (Foucault, 1977). Deleuze argues that disciplinary processes imposed
by nineteenth-century institutions, such as the school or the prison, are no longer spatially
attached to specific sites of reformation. According to him, this control has become integral to
flows of everyday existence, including consumption (1995b, 1995a). Accordingly, the market
operates as a disciplinary institution in consumer culture and sets the standards for normalcy. In
the case of halal boycott and white victimhood, disciplinary mechanisms to ensure normalcy
work in two dimensions. The first one is related to the legitimation of victim claim; by
presenting themselves as victims, the new racists get rid of the stigma associated with white
racism and eliminate the risk of being disqualified from full social acceptance by presenting
themselves as normal. Secondly, these campaigns aim to justify its exclusion from the social
fabric by defining halal as abnormal. In this way, they create an alleged victimizer and seek
support from the mainstream as ordinary citizens.
Moreover, Foucault, who distinguishes power from privilege, also highlights that power,
privilege prevailing in society, is justified according to a whole range of degrees of normality
rather than a dichotomy of dominant vs. dominated (200). Since whiteness as identity is built
upon securing certain privileges over others, the paradigm shift to greater equality – even though
its reflection on everyday life has been less tangible than legislation on equality—has been
deemed by many whites as a loss. Thus, to wrestle back their hegemonic stability, the white
supremacists take on the mantle of victimhood as their own by claiming to be victims of
discrimination.

Discussion for the Literature Review:

The halal market now refers to a range of consumerist practices from food to tourism to
finance and attracts the attention of scholars from different fields of study. Simultaneously, it
turns into a consumerist practice, which is also reductionist when viewed from another
perspective. This review of the halal literature also demonstrates how the existing literature
reduced the concept of halal into either a technical or an economic phenomenon. The studies
dealing with halal and consumerism are generally in the marketing field and aim to describe
consumer behavior. Some essential topics regarding halal and consumption can be listed as the
sense of belonging, elements affecting purchasing decisions, strategies for companies with the
intention to enter the halal market, including how to avoid unwanted attention with reference to
the anti-halal campaigns.

On the other hand, the studies focusing on the sociological aspect of halal usually deal with the
Islamophobic discourse over the proliferation of halal in the West and the role of religion and
culture in halal consumption. Their major concern is to examine how the widespread availability
of halal products in a non-Muslim context facilitates acculturation of Muslim immigrants into
their host culture and the impact of their faith on their identity. Even the studies covering the
boycott against halal products are either focusing on the economic impacts or try to reveal how
Islamophobic this is. Nevertheless, how the modern white supremacist movements have crafted a
victim status over the proliferation of the halal in the West and used this as a recruiting tool is
generally overlooked and unresearched.

Embracing the victim status as a stigma management strategy and instrumentalization of

victimhood as a recruitment tool by modern white supremacists does not only pertain to halal
consumption. There are several other cases in which the new racist has tried to hijacked or
sabotage, claiming the outcast's status. The modern white supremacist movements' victim
narratives can also be explicitly observed in the White Lives Matter rallies-- which aims to raise
the voice discrimination against the white-- as a response to the civil rights movement Black
Lives Matter, and anti-trans campaigns, allegedly aiming to protect the women, and children
from the harms inflicted by transgender individuals, and activism. What is common in all these
three campaigns is the emphasis on how they are stigmatized for exercising their right to free
speech and expressing their pride for who they are. On the other hand, unlike White Lives Matter
and anti-trans campaigns, halal boycott campaigns have immediate economic consequences. For
example, in 2014, Fleurieu Milk and Yoghurt Company decided to drop its halal certification and
terminate a yogurt supply contract with Emirates, worth about $50,000 a year after becoming a
target on Facebook pages "Halal Choices" and "Boycott Halal" ("Call").

The defensive posture by far-right and white supremacist movements who are accused of racism
and xenophobia implies a deeply sedimented level of entitlement of their historical privilege. The
narratives framing privileged white victimhood pose the risk of reinforcing the privilege of those
already unjustly privileged over others and undermine the struggle for social justice by erasing
the less privileged among their victims (Manne 200, 201). At this point, the Foucauldian
framework becomes useful as the victim narratives in the campaign against halal are re-
establishing themselves as concerned citizens and truth-tellers., and if they are telling the truth
that anyone but they dare to voice, they can also assert the victim status, and reclaim privilege
when their future and livelihood are threatened.

Theoretical Framework

Before discussing how discourse can be critically analyzed, it would be beneficial to outline how
this research understands the term discourse. Discourse is a complex term with various broad
interpretations. For this reason, ambiguity surrounding the term discourse is reflected in its
definition. While Cambridge Dictionary provides two different definitions for discourse, (1)
communication in speech or writing, (2) a speech or piece of writing about a particular, usually
serious, subject; Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines discourse in three different ways: (1)
verbal interchange of ideas, (2) formal, and orderly, and usually extended expression of thought
on a subject, and connected speech or writing”, and (3) linguistic unit (such as a conversation or
a story) more extensive than a sentence. These definitions show us that neither discourse nor
discourse analysis has a single definition. Thus, there are also different theoretical approaches to
discourse analysis.

In the Foucauldian approach, a social force has a central role in constructing the boundaries of
rational, irrational, and illegitimate. It determines what can and cannot be said; for example, the
discourse on whiteness and western identity credentials determines what can and cannot be said
about whiteness, and western identity credentials, who is white and western, and who is not, and
who can speak on whiteness. In order to identify structures of shared meaning, discourse analysis
analyses discursive practices. In other words, it determines how the world is perceived and what
can be done within (Foucault 176).
Similarly, Norman Fairclough defines as diverse representations of social life and underlines the
use of the plural form of the noun to show that discourses can take different forms. (456)
According to him, discourses represent the ways how we perceive both material --the processes,
relations, and structures--, and the mental world – beliefs, thoughts, feelings (176). Thus
meaning-making would not be possible without the ability of reading and understanding
discourse. (176). In her Discourse-Historical Approach, Ruth Wodak and her team focused on
three interconnected components: discourse, text, and genre, which provide a link between
discourse and ideological structure. Identification of specific discourse, investigation of
discursive strategies, linguistic means, and specific context-dependent linguistic choices are
suggested as three steps of DHA (Reisigl and Wodak 2009). Its goal to reveal the relationship
between interdiscursivity and intertextual and discourse is the crucial strength of Wodak’s
methodology.

According to Teun van Dijk, there is a direct connection between discourse and power. He
argues that while social cognitions of the powerful leads to discursive reproduction of power,
social cognitions are also the product of the situated discourse structures (259). This interplay
suggests that discourse, by definition, is directly connected to meaning-making and historical
developments. For Van Dijk, the question of how social structures influence mental, social
group Representations is the pinpoint of CDA (2003). In this regard, how a text underlines or
omits a piece of important information is affected by the theme of the conversation. For this
reason, Van Dijk defines denial of racism as a reflection of reverse racism and an attempt to
justify the individual from perceptions of racism. According to him, this attempt to acquit their
perception about racism also serves to reinforce solidarity and us (whites, real Britons, or
Australians) against them (Muslim immigrants) mentality (1992). Van Dijk also underlines the
importance of manipulation as a form of social power abuse, cognitive mind control, and
discursive interaction. He further underlines that discursive manipulation involves the usual
forms and formats of ideological discourse, such as the overstatement of “our good things” and
“their bad things.”

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)has become popular starting from the 1900s, and three
influential experts have frequently mentioned it with different approaches to discourse analysis,
namely Fairclough, Wodak, and van Dijk. Investigating how and why discourse carries the
significant cultural and ideological implications and contributes to the reproduction of
macrostructure, CDA is more than solely a text analysis (Van Dijk 2009), and requires analysis
of several layers, and consists of several methods (Wodak and Meyer 2009).

Intending to reveal how power, dominance, and inequality, hegemony, and resistance are
practiced in the discursiveness of social and political contexts (Van Dijk 2003), CDA, as an
approach, needs to be complex, and thus require multi-methodical closeness in order to be able
to analyze the existing social phenomena (Wodak, and Meyer 2009).

The multidisciplinary approach of CDA elaborates the relationship between cultural discourse
and social and cultural development (Jorgensen and Phillips 2002). In this sense, CDA
systematically aims to reveal the relationship between sacrifice, incident, and text and broader
social and cultural structures, relationships, and processes (Fairclough 132). On the other h, and,
as a CDA as a form of social practice, the critical theory is employed and analyzes inappropriate
relationships (Janks 1997). Based on this definition, the CDA contributes the critical theory by
exposing the oppressor's identity and reveals the role of language in relation to power and power
competition. Van Dijk considers CDA a critical combination of theory and application to
underline its interdisciplinary multi-methodological approach (2009). According to Wodak and
Meyer (2009), Fairclough and Wodak (1997), and Van Dijk (2009), the guiding objectives and
principles of CDA can be listed as:

 CDA is problem-oriented rather than focusing on current paradigms and fashions.

 CDA accepts discourse as a form of social action; thus, it is interested in explaining the
ways how discourse structures enact, legitimate, reproduce, and challenge relations of power and
dominance in society.

 CDA is multidisciplinary, which makes it an empirically adequate analysis of social

problems.

 CDA is perceived as social research as its critical research is concerned with social
problems, understanding human rights, social inequality, power abuse in domains such as racism,
classism, sexism, etc.

 CDA accepts that discourse analysis interpretive, and explanatory,

 CDA does not merely describe as the need to shed light on the phenomenon under
investigation to explain the social interaction and structures.

 CDA recognizes the link between text and society; thus, it emphasizes spontaneous
assessment in order to show that power relations are discursive and discourse is historical.

 CDA sheds light on the phenomenon under investigation and justify why certain
interpretations are effective than others.
Despite the abundance of the definition of discourse, and theoretical approaches in Critical
Discourse Analysis, Fairclough's Dialectic relational approach (1985, 2001), Ruth Wodak's
DHA, Van Dijk's socio-cognitive approach (2000, 2004, 2008) are among the most influential,
and frequently employed ones.

On the other hand, Van Dijk's socio-cognitive approach is the most appropriate one to analyze
the victimhood narrative of white supremacists for his special attention to the cognitive aspect of
discourse which pays attention to three aspects of discourse, cognition, society simultaneously,
and integrates them.

Van Dijk views CDA as a critical perspective or stance with the aim of revealing covert
ideologies in the social practice (2009). Thus, his triangulation of the interrelationship among
discourse, cognitive, and society offers a useful tool to discover how a cognitive phenomenon
and discourse structures are connected in the construction of domination and social inequality.
While Van Dijk also considers the white group domination as the main reason for social
inequality, racism, and domination in certain countries (2009), his approach also can shed light
on changing narratives of historically dominant groups to reconstruct and reproduce social
inequality. Rather than the form and structure, the meaning and context of a specific discourse
reveal the dominant ideology hidden in the text; ideological analytic categories will be described
based on Van Dijk's (2000) model. While Meaning, Propositional structures, Formal structures,
Sentence syntax, Discourse forms, Argumentation, Rhetoric, Action, and Interaction are some
levels of analysis proposed by van Djik to conduct a discourse analysis on a text (2000); the
following analytical categories are chosen to be applied on selected textual, and intertextual
materials:

ACTOR DESCRIPTION (MEANING)

A discourse may involve more than one description of actors varies depending on the narrative.
Actors can be described in an unspecific way, such as a group or a group member, an ally or an
enemy, or in a specific way by their first or family name. They can also be defined based on their
function or position in a group, their actions or alleged attributes, or relation to other people.
Description of an actor does not have to be merely negative and explicit. The same actor or
actors can be described in openly or implicitly negative or positive ways depending on the
discourse. This strategy also involves positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation
(Van Dijk 65).

The discourse articulated in halal boycott campaigns, a combination of positive self-presentation

and negative other-presentation, is employed to justify their actions as concerned citizens and
prove that they are the real victims of the growing halal market.

CATEGORIZATION (MEANING).
Categorization is strategically employed by political parties and groups to distinguish people and
attribute positive or negative characteristics to them. In addition to its role in setting the ground
for polarization (see POLARIZATION, US-THEM CATEGORIZATION), categorization also
includes subcategorization of the others by presenting some of them as lesser of two evils. The
most notable example of subcategorization in anti-halal discourse is the comparison between
halal and kosher.

NATIONAL SELF-GLORIFICATION (MEANING)

This strategy also includes positive self-presentation of OUR history, tradition, and principles of
our country. According to van Dijk, various forms of national self-glorification are routinely
implemented by politicians with nationalist tendencies. National self-glorification and frustration
over denial of pride are among the most notable strategies of white supremacists to legitimate
their victimization claim.

POLARIZATION, US-THEM CATEGORIZATION (MEANING).

Polarization, the categorical division of people in in-group (US) and outgroup (THEM), is one of
the most outstanding semantic strategies in debates about Others. For Chilton, the narrative in
most political discourse is in favor of antonymous lexical choices, and the other lexical choices
are made in a way that forces the recipient to make mental models with a binary character (203).
Overemphasis on differences between US and THEM and presentation of the Others as
semantically their opposites enhance the ingroup-outgroup polarization. According to van Dijk,
these descriptions have semantic, rhetorical, and argumentative functions to present
(il)legitimacy of immigration (80).

SITUATION DESCRIPTION (MEANING).

The categorical division of people falls short in describing the relationship between US and
THEM. In order to provide a full picture about causes, reasons, consequences, and evaluation,
actions, experiences, and whole situations need to be described. Claims that incompetent
Muslims are chosen over competent whites for halal slaughter, how they are compelled to eat
halal since the majority of products on groceries are secretly halal can be given as examples of
situation description strategy in anti-halal discourse.

VAGUENESS (MEANING).

Vagueness as strategy includes expressions without well-defined referents, vague quantifiers

('few', 'a lot'), ad- verbs ('very') nouns ('thing'), and adjectives ('low', 'high'), among other
expressions may be typical in biased speeches. In this regard, self-perceived collective
victimhood manifested in the narratives in the anti-halal campaigns also contains various forms
of Vagueness.

VICTIMIZATION (MEANING).

Victimization as a discursive strategy is the further step of Categorization and Polarization. Once
the Others are associated with negative attributes, then the in-group automatically become the
victim of the Other. The discourse on halal mainly revolves around the ideological dichotomy of
US vs. THEM and emphasis on the injuries inflicted by the system against the white. Such as
discrimination at the workplace -- non-Muslim abattoirs are losing their job to Muslims because
of expansion of Halal industry or imposition of Islamic religious tax under the disguise of halal
certification fee.

AUTHORITY (ARGUMENTATION).

In this strategy, the narrator references authorities to increase their legitimacy, objectivity, and
reliability. National or international organizations, scholars, the media, the church, or the courts
are among these authorities who are resorted for justification.

ILLEGALITY (ARGUMENTATION).

As a part of the strategy of negative other-presentation, emphasis on compatibility with law and
order further criminalizes the Others. In the halal debate, alleged funding of terrorism and cruelty
of halal slaughter can be given as examples for the strategy of negative other-presentation and
criminalization.

CONSENSUS (POLITICAL STRATEGY)

This strategy aims to foster inter-group solidarity about the issues of "national importance."
There is often a special emphasis on unity within the country and reinforces the binary US vs.
THEM pair of in-groups and outgroups.

NEGATIVE OTHER-PRESENTATION (SEMANTIC MACRO- STRATEGY).

According to van Dijk, the categorization of people in in-groups and outgroups lays the
groundwork for ideologically based applications of norms and values. Once the Others are
defined as a burden or a threat, they are both lexically and semantically referred to in the content
of discourse in a negative way.

In the context of the anti-halal campaign and self-perceived white victimhood, implementation of
this strategy is closely related to stigma management. Emphasis on the violation of rights in
specific areas, including women and LGBT rights, are examples of this strategy present in the
anti-halal text.

POSITIVE SELF-PRESENTATION (SEMANTIC MACRO STRATEGY).

This strategy can be employed both at the individual and collective levels and may combine with
negative-other presentation strategy. While emphasis placed on shortcomings and faults of the
outgroups is necessary for the creation of negative conceptions about the Others, the focus is
shifted on only the positive traits and behaviors of the in-group (Chilton 2004). "This may take a
more individual form of face-keeping or impression management, as we know them from
familiar disclaimers ("I am not a racist, but..."), or a more collective form in which the speaker
emphasizes the positive characteristics of the own group, such as the own party, or the own
country." (van Dijk 81)

LEXICALIZATION (STYLE).

Lexicalization is a sine qua non for a linguistic analysis as word selection reflects ideologically
controlled discourse meanings (van Dijk 1995). In semantic and linguistic analysis, selected
lexical choices are essential for categorizing people and describing a situation as they attach a
special meaning to actions, objects, and subjects involved (Sun 2007).

REPETITION (RHETORIC). As a general rhetorical device, repetition is, of course, hardly

specific to debates on immigration. However, it may play a specific role in the overall strategy of
emphasizing Our good things and Their bad ones. Thus, throughout this debate, we find
numerous literal or semantic repetitions of the accusation that (most) refugees are bogus, not
genuine, illegal, or otherwise break norms, rules, or the law. Alternatively, conversely,
specifically for this debate, that poor English taxpayers should pay for this. This may be so
within individual speeches or across speeches when respective MPs support the opinions of
previous speakers. In some cases, repetitions take a more 'artistic' form, for instance, when Ms.
Gorman presents two parallel forms of exploitation, that of the system and the people: "Such
people should not be exploited by people who are exploiting the system."

Other important analytical categories of Van Dijk's (2000) model are included:

Metaphor, comparison, contra-factual, disclaimers, euphemism, evidentiality, example or

illustration, generalization, hyperbole, irony, number game, presupposition, implication,
distancing, dramatization, history as a lesson, humanitarianism, legality, honesty, openness,
pseudo-ignorance, reasonableness.

Methodology

This research will utilize qualitative research methods. The epistemological base of this
qualitative research lies in the "Pragmatist" approach. Pragmatism is a deconstructive paradigm,
which 'sidesteps the contentious issues of truth, and reality, and focuses instead on 'what works'
as the truth regarding the research questions under investigation. In qualitative research, there are
four basic types of data collection procedures: (1) observation, (2) interviews, (3) documents, (4)
visual images.

This project outlines how the white supremacist movement has changed its discourse and claims
the victim status because of shifting social and political circumstances. To achieve this, as part of
the qualitative analysis, this study will employ critical discourse analysis with a primary focus on
both linguistic and non-linguistic structure of social media posts on YouTube, and Facebook,
documents published on official websites of political parties, and anti-halal in the UK, and also
the user comments on these platforms between 2014, and 2020. A purposive thematic analysis
and interpretation of far-right groups' discourse on the availability of halal in non-Muslim
countries will be conducted to delineate, define, and categorize the typology of white
supremacist narratives.

The empirical body of this research consists of official statements and transcripts of speeches on
halal boycott taken from official websites of far-right pollical parties, including For Britain in
UK and Q Society of Australia. The rationale behind this choice of empirical material is first and
foremost that these political parties are not only the most vocal anti-halal groups but also their
official propaganda based on the promotion of white victimhood narratives. In addition to
statements made by far-right political on halal, Facebook pages dedicated to halal boycott,
namely Facebook group pages: Boycott Halal Certification in Australia (ID: 693361674081960),
Boycott & Ban Halal Slaughter in Australia (ID: 489562921216259), Ban Halal in Great Britain
(ID: 928924730485681), Boycott Halal - UK (ID: 187766907922898), and personal Facebook
page of Kirralie Smith, who initiated halal boycott campaign in Australia, and founded of Halal
Choices, and web sites Boycott Halal, Halal Choices, and non-Halal will also be analyzed in
order to spot similarities, and differences between online grassroot movements, and discourse of
political elites on halal, and self-perceived white victimhood.

This thesis aims to determine whether or not the white supremacist discourse utilizes the
phenomenon of victimhood as a recruiting tool by examining the anti-halal campaigns in the UK
and Australia. If so, whether or not it is possible to track down the white victimhood narrative in
this particular campaign. In order to make a substantial claim about victimhood inflicted by halal
proliferation in the white supremacist narratives, this study needs to analyze a large sample that
is enough to allow for a comparison, both on a national level and as well as between the selected
countries, the UK and Australia, and also, small enough to account for the demands of a
qualitative approach.

The sample will be collected manually from publicly accessible websites and Facebook group
pages. The selected group pages are categorized as personal pages rather than public pages; thus,
it is not possible to use Facebook API, software designed to extract data from social media as
FacePager. In addition to this, due to Facebook's hate speech policy, posts on these pages are
frequently deleted by Facebook; for this reason, screenshots of analyzed posts and comments
will be listed in the appendix section. Another factor complicating the research process is that
due to religious freedom legislation in Australia, the websites, Halal Choices, and non-Halal, and
Q Society of Australia, which deregistered itself on January 30, 2020, are no longer accessible.
Thus, the empirical data extracted from these pages are accessed via the Wayback Machine,
software developed for the Internet Archive, and links for these websites will be given through
the Wayback Machine.

A manual sighting of all selected websites and Facebook pages will be the first task of the
sampling process. In order to guide the empirical analysis, two key categories of victimhood
discourses determined as stigma management, siege mentality. Based on these two key
categories, all empirical data will be categorized into four main themes, namely "discrimination
against whites," "abolishment of rights," "denial of pride of being white," and "risk of racial
elimination." However, the boundaries between these themes are not strictly defined, and any
document, speech, or post can be listed for more than one category or theme. After completing
the manual task of the sighting and initial descriptions of the data, each selected text will be
analyzed based on the analytical categories of Van Dijk's model (2000). The sub-categories
determined will be Actor description, Categorization, National self-glorification, Polarization,
Situation Description, Vagueness, Victimization, Authority, Illegality, Consensus, Negative-
other presentation, Positive Self-Presentation, Lexicalization, and Repetition.

Thus, the analytical data processing will be conducted in three steps: The first step involves the
categorization of each text according to the victimhood discourse as outlined in the analytical
model above. At this stage, each article is read, and discourses of victimhood present in the text
are noted down. Another purpose of this stage is to determine whether a multitude of discourses
are present or not and reveal the discourse that dominates the text. Once the categories of the
discourse of victimhood are identified in the first stage, the second stage of the analysis is
conducted to identify the selected analytical categories of Van Dijk's model present in the text.
This step also includes a short summary of the main points of the discourse of the author,
whether there is any reference to, quotation, and paraphrases from the third parties.

Following the categorization of the selected texts and identification of predetermined analytical
categories of Van Dijk's model present in the text, the final and third steps of the analysis will
offer a critical interpretation of the discourse of victimhood in relation to halal consumption.
This step aims to bridge the findings of the first two steps with a detailed analysis of the selected
text. This step also puts forward how social inequalities and privileges are embedded within the
discourse, how the different discourses of victimhood are reproduced, and how the discourses in
each text relate to each other. According to van Dijk, the CDA's real power to contribute critical
social or political analyses relies on its ability to provide an account of the role of language,
language use, discourse, or communicative events in the (re)production of dominance and
inequality. (1993, 279). Thus, this step also strives to discover how lexical choices within the
discourse reflect or reproduce existing power structures and reinforce experiences of social
inequalities or self-perceived victimization.

Once all selected texts are analyzed in line with van Dijk's socio-cognitive approach to CDA,
further analysis of each text analyzed in this study will be conducted to compare similarities and
differences in victimization discourse over halal consumption selected countries the UK and
Australia. This comparison will allow us to identify the common strategies of white supremacist
movements to mainstream the white supremacist thoughts by utilizing narratives of white
victimhood. Moreover, this additional analysis also aims to reveal the reflection of political
actors' discourse on victimhood and halal on online anti-halal discourse and how the notions of
abjection, empowerment, and disempowerment are incorporated in relation to Western identity
credentials and whiteness.

Research Questions

With the literature review in mind, this research will answer the following research questions:
1. Are there indications of self-perceived victimhood among the white supremacist
movement within the context of Halal? If so, how is it manifested, and what characteristics are
observed?

2. What are common concepts and strategies developed by the white supremacist movement
against halal slaughter to justify their victimizing by the expansion of the halal market?

3. How does the portrayal of Muslims in campaigns against halal slaughter function as a
form of national abjection?

4. How do notions of abjection, empowerment, and disempowerment are incorporated in

relation to Western identity credentials and whiteness within the context of anti-halal activism?

5. How does the rhetoric of being under siege serve as a tool for the establishment of outcast
and/or victim status by white supremacists?

Data Analysis

Discourse analysis on utilization of the phenomenon of victimhood as a recruiting tool by the

white supremacist discourse in the UK and Australia will be conducted in three sections. The
first section will cover the discourse of far-right political movement in the UK and Australia on
halal, and victimization inflicted by halal will constitute the first section of the discourse
analysis. In this section, four articles from the official website of For Britain Party, titled
"Animal Welfare Report - Non-Stun Slaughter," "Halal, and Muslim victimhood," and "Help Us
Stop Non-Stun Slaughter" by Anne Marie Waters, the For Britain Leader, and "Is Islam Halal for
The Rest of Us?" by Ian Sleeper, and also draft Letters to members of parliaments about halal
products, and three articles form the web site of Q Society of Australia titled: Halal Certification
Schemes," "Q on Halal Food, and Halal Certification," and Q Society draft petition o Halal
Labeling to be submitted for the Parliament. This section will track down the traces of white
supremacist political elites in online grassroot campaigns. The second section will be devoted to
the analysis of websites, namely sites Boycott Halal, Halal Choices, and non-Halal established as
a guide to online halal boycott campaigns. Analysis of these websites is essential as they are
frequently cited as a reference by selected Facebook group pages. In addition to web pages, this
section will also examine posts and comments about halal on the personal Facebook page of
Kirralie Smith, who initiated the halal boycott campaign in Australia and founded Halal Choices.
The rationale behind the decision to include her Facebook posts and comments is to reveal
differences and similarities between her website Halal Choices and the reactions of her followers
as her website does not allow visitors to leave comments on the articles.

The last section will deal with posts and comment published on Facebook group pages: Boycott
Halal Certification in Australia (ID: 693361674081960), Boycott & Ban Halal Slaughter in
Australia (ID: 489562921216259), Ban Halal in Great Britain (ID: 928924730485681), Boycott
Halal - UK (ID: 187766907922898). Each post will be analyzed both in terms of linguistic and
non-linguistic features, including photos and emojis, and the comments made on this specific
post will be analyzed together with it. On the other hand, names or nicknames of those who
comment on these posts will be redacted to protect their privacy.

For Britain Party was founded in October 2017 after its founding leader, Anne Marie Waters,
lost the race for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) leadership. Anne Marie Waters, the founder
of Sharia Watch UK, started her political journey at Labour Party but later moved to the far-right
and actively involved several far-right groups, including UKİP, Pegida UK.

Defining themselves as a pro-Britain party that believes in equality of all British people,
regardless of color, sex, or background; its leader Anne Marie Waters' speech at Democratic
Football Lads Alliance in Swansea in August 2018 expressed her disappointment about anti-
white hatred, and demanded recognition of white people as the indigenous people of Europe:
"White people have absolutely nothing to apologize for, we have nothing to feel guilty about,
and Europe is our little part of the world, and we have every right to a home, and, just like every
other racial group on this planet." The anti-halal boycott campaign of For Britain strongly
emphasizes animal welfare; however, there is also demand for clear labeling and claims of
funding terrorism.

The Animal Welfare - Non-Stun Slaughter Report of For Britain, which can be accessed via
https://www.forbritain.uk/2019/09/07/animal-welfare-non-stun-slaughter-report/ is written by the
Party leader Anne Marie Waters to provide an overview on the Party's stance about non-stun
slaughter, and halal. 1,629-word Report contains five sub-titles which are Introduction, Non-
Meat Certification, Campaigns, Kosher, For Britain's Position.

The Animal Welfare - Non-Stun Slaughter Report of For Britain contains several analytical
strategies defined by van Dijk model: Actor description, positive self-presentation, and negative
other-presentation, categorization, polarization US vs. THEM, victimization, national self-
glorification, situation description, vagueness, authority, illegality, lexicalization, and also
repetition (2000). In this particular text, the white supremacist rhetoric about victimization
manifests itself in the siege mentality and stigma management.

The Report starts with the definition of halal as "food prepared according to sharia law" and "a
staple of the Western diet" despite there is the more neutral definition for halal in the literature
such as "means lawful or permissible" Voloder, 2015, Bejarano 2017) "permissible under Islamic
principles, and practices" Mumuni et al. 2017), "pure" or "wholesome concerning meat in
particular in proper Islamic practice" (Bergeaud-Blackler, Fischer, and Lever 2016) or "Islamic-
compatible" (Blackler,2016). Sun's lexical choices in discourse are important elements for the
categorization of people, and description of a situation as they attach a special meaning to
actions, objects, and subjects involved (2007). Thus, the selection of words "sharia law" and
"staple" do bear not only negative implications such as "sharia law is coming to West" but also
defines halal food as something that forcefully penetrates Western lifestyle, which further
reinforces the claim that they are under siege due to proliferation of halal.

"Halal food, food prepared according to sharia law, has become a staple of the Western
diet –, and much of this food is sold unlabeled. Halal is a multi-billion-dollar global
industry involving agriculture and farming, food processing, catering, manufacturing,
pharmaceuticals, tourism, and trade."

Putting a strong emphasis on the brutal nature of halal slaughter by reiterating "Halal slaughter
involves cutting the throat of a conscious animal" three times, the Report gives reference to from
the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), the Farm Animal Welfare
Committee, the Government advisory body in order to increase their legitimacy.

"The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) has stated that
"Evidence clearly indicates that slaughter without pre-stunning can cause unnecessary
suffering." The RSPCA launched a campaign against religious unstunned slaughter in
2019, but it has had little success in persuading authorities to take action on this issue."

"The Government advisory body, the Farm Animal Welfare Council (now Committee),
argues that the practice should be banned because animals experience "very significant
pain, and distress" before they become unconscious."

By referring to halal slaughter as "cutting the throat of a conscious animal," the author evokes
sympathy for animals that are slaughtered in pain. This is achieved particularly through
verification by authority. In this strategy, authorities such as national or international
organizations or the media are resorted to justification. However, verification by authority is not
the only strategy employed here. The use of lexical choice denoting inhumanity, such as cutting
the throat of a conscious animal, also helps the author locate halal meat as an item of the abject.
In this way, halal meat becomes something conflicting with standards for normalcy, which
eventually legitimates its exclusion from society.

The Slaughter of Animals Act 1933, which allows Muslims and Jews to perform un-stunned
slaughter to produce their meat, is also cited to reveal the foundation of halal slaughter in the
UK. According to the Report, this "limited exemption" has been abused by halal meat producers
via the widespread availability of unlabeled halal meat, which is being served at schools,
hospitals, pubs, and sporting venues throughout Britain.

According to the National Secular Society, "the Government no longer keeps statistics on
religious slaughter and said in October 2010 that it did not know the number of halal
slaughterhouses.

This was a reiteration of the requirement that religiously slaughtered meat is provided
only for those religious groups. This is dramatically not the case in relation to halal.

A Mail on Sunday investigation in 2010 found that schools, hospitals, pubs, and sporting
venues throughout Britain are routinely serving halal meat un-labeled. Iconic arenas
named included Ascot, Twickenham, and Wembley Stadium. NHS hospitals serving
halal meat, without informing patients, include London's largest Trust – Guy's & St
Thomas.

In 2013, an East London newspaper reported that three-quarters of schools in the London
Borough of Waltham Forest were serving halal meat to all pupils. These schools were
under the control of the Borough Council. The same Report referred to a school in
Chingford which informed parents that meat served there would be replaced by an all-
halal menu, prompting protests from some. A council spokesperson is reported to have
said "All meat provided to local schools is certified by the Halal Food Authority."

The emphasis on the volume of the halal industry and claim that non-Muslims are consuming
halal food unknowingly as sold unlabeled does not only describe the situation being under siege
but also implies that they are being victimized multi-billion-dollar global industry cannot survive
by only targeting Muslims.

In order to strengthen the point that they are being victimized as this "limited exemption" has
been abused by Muslims, the author includes news articles covering the story of people fired for
accidentally serving non-halal meat at a multi-faith school in Birmingham in 2013.
 "Various reports of people being fired from their jobs for accidentally serving non-halal
meat have also emerged. A dinner lady was fired from a Birmingham school in 2013 for
serving non-halal meat at a supposed multi-faith school. The subsequent news reports
confirmed that 1,400 pupils at Moseley school were routinely being served halal meat,
regardless of religion, and without being informed. The head-teacher apologized for the
unintentional error of allowing non-halal meat to be supplied, but many Muslim parents
demanded punishment. A Birmingham City Council spokesperson also apologized."

The actor description in this paragraph is highly emotive and provides a contrast of negative
other-presentation and positive self-presentation. An innocent woman who becomes unemployed
for accidentally served non-halal meat and uncompromising Muslim parents demanded
punishment over a simple mistake despite the apology. This description of the actors both
reinforces the polarization US vs. THEM and stands as a clear example of negative other-
presentation. It also suggests that in addition to victimization inflicted by consuming halal meat
without being informed, they can be victimized to please a vocal minority. Taking this argument
further, she also voices claims of discrimination against non-Muslims in employment:

"[…] a de facto discrimination against non-Muslims emerges in the abattoir employment

field. The law potentially allows for exemptions to discriminatory employment laws for
reasons such as these (if it can be argued, legally, that there is a "genuine occupational
requirement"), however this merely compounds the advantage of Muslims in employment
terms in the meat market as halal continues to exp, and."

Such formulations of discrimination and ingroup-outgroup polarization reverse the role for
ingroup members when the author defines Us "non-Muslims" as victims; thus, they are denied
the rights granted to the immigrants (Berbrier 2000).

Illegality is also employed as a major strategy in this text. In addition to the inhumane halal
slaughter method and discrimination against non-Muslim, examples of how halal certification is
internationally connected with Islamist organizations and terrorist groups are given to further
criminalize halal meat.

(…) The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) issued a suspension and fine to ISNA-Canada
in 2018 after an audit raised concerns that it had provided resources "to support armed
militancy."

According to the CRA, "the society's resources may have, directly or indirectly, been
used the support the political efforts of Jamaat-e-Islami, and/or its armed wing Hizbul
Mujahideen.".
 (…) halal certification in France is often provided by "experts", themselves certified by
the UOIF, or Union of the Islamic Organizations in France, which according to the Simon
Wiesenthal Centre has strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Such criminalization is one of the most typical ways to define immigrants in racist narratives. In
the examples above, the author actively gives a voice to a figure of authority to imply they have
a legitimate ground for opposing halal meat or certification, in general, because someone else
says so, and law and order arguments, and is resorted as part of the strategy of negative other-
presentation:

"(As with many matters involving the Islamic faith, accurate and reliable information is
difficult to find. We can, therefore only inform you of some of the most common beliefs
and statements surrounding this issue).

Rebranding racism as an advocacy effort is one of the stigma strategies employed by modern
white supremacists (Omiand Winant 2013, Robertson 1974). In order to expose the systematic
attacks of mainstream society and political correctness:

Critics of halal, or even those who raise questions or call for labeling, have been accused
of 'picking on religious minorities. Those who attest that they are acting out of concern
for animal welfare are dismissed as liars – meaning they are in a lose-lose situation.

According to van Dijk, the definition of the situation is crucial to make a point. Moreover, the
way how the situation is described also gives us clues about causes, reasons, consequences, and
evaluation. In this regard, it is important for far-right groups to redefine discrimination and
racism.

The Lancashire Council of Mosques objected to this (Lancashire Council's decision to

vote to stop supplying the county's schools with un-stunned halal meat), and "threatened
to ask Muslim families across the county to boycott all school meals".

This quotation implies the fact that they are one whom the Muslims threaten with a boycott, not
the other way around, yet, they are the ones who are forced to legitimate their reasons for being
against halal. Situation definition is important for stigma management to prove that they are
denied freedom of expression. Here is a detailed example of how they are being silenced debate:

Similarly, in Kirklees, West Yorkshire, councillors attempted to debate the provision of

un-stunned halal meat to schools, but the debate was shut down under accusations of
'targeting sections of the community'. Labour's council leader Shabir P, and or shut down
any debate, saying, "I'm closing the debate on halal at full council. Diversity is our
 strength. Those questioning our provision of halal don't have animal welfare at heart.
They have targeted sections of the community which had caused fear [sic]. Our policy on
halal will remain in place."

In this example, the author underlines that not only denied having a voice but also obstructed by
non-white who is also a member of Labour Party which Waters left due to its "betrayal of the
country" over Islam. This kind of situation and actor description aim to prove that being under
siege is an important step for establishing victim status by white supremacists.

Bibliography

Adams, J., & Roscigno, V. J. (2005). White Supremacists, Oppositional Culture and the World Wide
Web. Social Forces, 84(2), 759–778. https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.2006.0001
Africa Islamic Economic Foundation. (2013). The Global Halal Industry: An Overview Retrieved
from http://gifr.net/gifr2013/ch_13.PDF
Aissaoui, Rabah, (2009), Immigration, and National Identity: North African Political Movements in
Colonial, and Post-Colonial France, I. B. Taurus
Akcapar, Sebnem K. (2012, Turkish Immigrants in Western Europe, and North America, Routledge
Alsop, R., Bertelsen, M., and Holl, and, J. (2006) Empowerment in Practice From Analysis to
 Implementation (Washington, DC, World Bank)
Al-Kahtani,H.,Ismail,E., andAsifAhmed,M.(2017), “Pork detection in binary meat mixtures, and
some commercial food products using conventional, and real-time PCR techniques”, Food
Chemistry, Vol. 219, pp. 54-60.
Alzeer, J., Rieder, U., and Hadeed, K. (2018), “Rational, and practical aspects of Halal, and Tayyib
in the context of food safety”, Trends in Food Science & Technology, Vol. 71, pp. 264-267.
Ali, A., Ali, A., and Sherwani, M. (2017), “Shaping Halal into a br, and? Factors affecting
consumers’ Halal br, and purchase intention”, Journal of International Food & Agribusiness
Marketing, Vol. 29 No. 3, pp. 234-259.
Ali,A.,Xiaoling, G.,Sherwani, M., andAli,A.(2017), “Factors affecting Halal meat purchase
intention”, British Food Journal, Vol. 119 No. 3, pp. 527-541.
Ariffin, S., and Wahid, N. (2017), “Confidence in Halal Logo strengthens the relationship between
consumer’s value-expressive function, and attitude toward Kopitiam (coffee shop)”,
Advanced Science Letters, Vol. 23 No. 11, pp. 10672-10675.
Arnould, Eric J., and Craig J. Thompson (2005), "Consumer Culture Theory (CCT): Twenty Years of
Research", Journal of Consumer Research, 31 (4), 868-882.
Aziz, Y., and Chok, N. (2013), “The role of Halal awareness, Halal certification, and marketing
components in determining Halal purchase intention among non-Muslims in Malaysia: a
structural equation modeling approach”, Journal of International Food & Agribusiness
Marketing, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 1-23.
Barr, Stewart (2004), "What we buy, what we throw away, and how we use our voice. Sustainable
household waste management in the UK", Sustainable Development, 12 (1), 32–44.
Bar-Tal, D., Chernyak-Hai, L., Schori, N., & Gundar, A. (2009). A sense of self-perceived collective
victimhood in intractable conflicts. International Review of the Red Cross, 91(874), 229.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1816383109990221
Bar-Tal, D. (2012). Siege Mentality. In The Encyclopedia of Peace Psychology (pp. 996–999).

Bashir, A., Bayat, A., Olutuase, S., and Abdul Latiff, Z. (2018), “Factors affecting consumers’
intention towards purchasing halal food in South Africa: as structural equation modelling”,
Journal of Food Products Marketing, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 1-23.
Bataille, G. "Abjection and Miserable Forms (1934)." Translated by Yvonne Shafir. More & Less 2
(1997).
Bergeaud-Blackler, Florence, and Bernard, Bruno (2010). Comprendre le Halal. Liège: Edipro.
Berbrier, M. (1998). “Half the Battle”: Cultural Resonance, Framing Processes, and Ethnic
Affectations in Contemporary White Separatist Rhetoric. Social Problems, 45(4), 431–450.
https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.1998.45.4.03x0174r
Berbrier, M. (2000). The Victim Ideology of White Supremacists and White Separatists in the United
States. Sociological Focus, 33(2), 175–191.
 https://doi.org/10.1080/00380237.2000.10571164
Berbrier, M. (1999). Impression Management for the Thinking Racist: A Case Study of
Intellectualization as Stigma Transformation in Contemporary White Supremacist Discourse.
The Sociological Quarterly, 40(3), 411–433.
Blazak, R. (2001). White Boys to Terrorist Men: Target Recruitment of Nazi Skinheads. American
Behavioral Scientist, 44(6), 982.
Bonne, K., Vermeir, I., Bergeaud-blacker, F., and Verbeke, W. (2007), “Determinants of halal meat
consumption in France”, British Food Journal, Vol. 109 No. 5, pp. 367-386.
Butt, M., Rose, S., Wilkins, S., and Ul Haq, J. (2017), “MNCs, and religious influences in global
markets”, International Marketing Review, Vol. 34 No. 6, pp. 885-908.
Chandia, M., and Soon, J. (2018), “The variations in religious, and legal underst, andings on halal
slaughter”, British Food Journal, Vol. 120 No. 3, pp. 714-730.
Chilton, P. (2004).Analyzing political discourse: theory , and practice. London:
Routledge.
Cooper, Tim (2004), "Inadequate life? Evidence of consumer attitudes to product obsolescence",
Journal of Consumer Policy, 27 (4), 421-449.
Cooper, Tim (2005), "Slower Consumption Reflections on Product Life Spans, and the Throwaway
Society", Journal of Industrial Ecology, 9 (1-2), 51-67
Cova, Bernard, Robert V. Kozinets, and Avi Shankar (2007), Consumer tribes, Oxford: Butterworth
Heinemann.
Deleuze, Gilles (1995a), Control, and Becoming. In: Kritzman Lawrence D. (ed.) Negotiations:
Gilles Deleuze. New York: Columbia University Press, 169-176.
Deleuze, Gilles (1995b), Postscript on Control Societies. In: Kritzman Lawrence D. (ed.)
Negotiations:
Demirci, M.N., Soon, J.M., and Wallace, C.A. (2016), “Positioning food safety in halal assurance”,
Food Control, Vol. 70, pp. 257-270.
de Coverly, Edd., Pierre. McDonagh, Lisa. O'Malley, et al. (2008), "Hidden Mountain: The Social
Avoidance of Waste", Journal of Macromarketing, 28 (3), 289-303.
Dobratz, B. A., and Shanks-Meile, S. L. (1997). The White Separatist Movement in the United
States: "White Power, White Pride!" (1st ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press.
Fairclough, N.L., 1985 , Critical, and descriptive goals in discourse analysis. Journal of pragmatics
9, 739-63.
Fairclough, N., 1989, Language, and ideology. English language Research Journal 3: 9- 27.
Fairclough, N., 1999. Language, and Power. London: Longman.
Farouk, M., Al-Mazeedi, H., Sabow, A., Bekhit, A., Adeyemi, K., Sazili, A., and Ghani, A. (2014),
“Halal, and kosher slaughter methods, and meat quality: a review”, Meat Science, Vol. 98
No. 3, pp. 505-519.
Farouk, M. (2013), “Advances in the industrial production of halal, and kosher red meat”, Meat
Science, Vol. 95, No. 4, pp. 805-820.
Farouk, M., Pufpaff, K., and Amir, M. (2016), “Industrial halal meat production, and animal welfare:
a review”, Meat Science, Vol. 120, pp. 60-70.
Fischer, Johan (2008). Proper Islamic Consumption: Shopping among the Malays in Modern
Malaysia. Copenhagen: NIAS Press.
Firat, A. Fuat, and Alladi Venkatesh (1993), "Postmodernity: The age of marketing", International
Journal of Research in Marketing, 10 (3), 227–249.
Fuseini, A.,Knowles,T.,Hadley,P., andWotton,S.(2016),“Halal stunning, and slaughter: criteria for the
assessment of dead animals”, Meat Science, Vol. 119, pp. 132-137.
Foucault, Michel (1977), Discipline, and Punish, London: Penguin.
Foucault, Michel (1997c), Subjectivity, and Truth. In: Rabinow P (ed.) Essential Works of Foucault,
1954-1984, vol. 1: Ethics. New York: The New Press.
Futrell, R., and Simi, P. (2017). The [Un]Surprising Alt-Right. Contexts, 16(2), 76–76.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1536504217714269
Gabriel, Yiannis, and Tim Lang (2006), The Unmanageable Consumer: Second Edition, London:
Sage.
Grandin, T. (2010), “Auditing animal welfare at slaughter plants”, Meat Science, Vol. 86, No. 1, pp.
56-65.
Goffman, E. (1986). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1st ed.). New York, NY:
Touchstone.
Gubrium, J. F., & Holstein, J. A. (1997). The new language of qualitative method. New York: Oxford
Univ. Press.
Guillaume D. Johnson, Kevin D. Thomas & Sonya A. Grier (2017): When the burger becomes halal:
a critical discourse analysis of privilege, and marketplace inclusion, Consumption Markets &
Culture, DOI: 10.1080/10253866.2017.1323741.
Halawa, Abdelhadi. (2018). Acculturation of Halal Food to the American Food Culture through
Immigration, and Globalization: A Literature Review. Journal of Ethnic, and Cultural
Studies. 5. 53-63.
Haleem, A., and Khan, M.I. (2017), “Towards successful adoption of Halal logistics, and its’
implications for the stakeholders”, British Food Journal, Vol. 119 No. 7, pp. 1592-1605.
Haleem, A., Khan, M.I., and Khan, S. (2019), “Halal certification, the inadequacy of its adoption,
modelling, and strategising the efforts”, Journal of Islamic Marketing, (in press), available at:
https://doi.org/10.1108/JIMA-05-2017-0062.
Holstein, James & Miller, Gale. (1990). Rethinking Victimization: An Interactional Approach to
Victimology. Symbolic Interaction - SYMB INTERACT. 13. 103-122.
10.1525/si.1990.13.1.103.
Ibrahim, S., and S. Alkire (2007), “Empowerment, and agency: A proposal for internationally-
comparable indicators”, Oxford Development Studies 35:4, p. 379-403.
Izberk-Bilgin, E., and Nakata, C. (2016), “Anew look atfaith-based marketing: the global halal
market”, Business Horizons, Vol. 59 No. 3, pp. 285-292.
Park, S., Lee, S., Sim, Y., Choi, J., Park, E., and Noh, B. (2017), “Analysis of ethanol in soy sauce
using electronic nose for halal food certification”, Food Science, and Biotechnology, Vol. 26
No. 2, pp. 311-317.
Preman, andh, J., and Bin Salem, S.(2017), “Progress, and challenges associated with halal
authentication of consumer-packaged goods”, Journal of the Science of Food, and
Agriculture, Vol. 97 No. 14, pp. 4672-4678.
Rahman, M.M., Khatun, M.M., Rahman, M.H., and Ansary, N.P. (2014), “Food safety issues in
Islam”, Health, Safety, and Environment, Vol. 2 No. 6, pp. 132-145.
Rahman, S. (2017), “Religion, and animal welfare – an Islamic perspective”, Animals, Vol. 7, No.
12, pp. 1-6.
Talib, M. (2017), “Motivations, and benefits of halal food safety certification”, Journal of Islamic
Marketing, Vol. 8 No. 4, pp. 605-624.
Kabeer, N. (2001a) Reflections on the Measurement of Women" s Empowerment- Theory, and
Practice, in: Discussing women" s empowerment-theory, and practice (Stockholm, Novum
Grafiska AB ).
Khan, M.I., and Haleem, A. (2016), “Underst, anding ‘Halal’, and ‘Halal Certification &
accreditation system’–a brief review”, Saudi Journal of Business, and Management Studies,
Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 32-42.
Kern, Soeren, (2015), "France Goes Halal", downloaded from www.gatestoneinstitute.org,
11/8/2015
Kristeva, J. “Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection.” (1980).
Kozinets, RV, and JM H, andelman (2004), "Adversaries of consumption: Consumer movements,
activism, and ideology", Journal of Consumer Research, 31 (3), 691-704.
Lever, John (2013). “The Postliberal Politics of Halal: New Trajectories in the Civilizing Process?”
Special Issue of Human Figurations 2(3).
Malhotra, A., and S. Shuler (2005), "Women" s empowerment as a Variable in International
Development." In Measuring Empowerment: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives. 71–88.
McVeigh, R. (1999). Structural Incentives for Conservative Mobilization: Power Devaluation and
the Rise of the Ku Klux Klan, 1915-1925. Social Forces, 77(4), 1461–1496.
Muhamad, N., Leong, V., and Md Isa, N. (2017), “Does the country of origin of a halal logo matter?
The case of packaged food purchases”, Review of International Business, and Strategy, Vol.
27 No. 4, pp. 484-500.
Murray, Jeff B. (2002), "The Politics of Consumption: A Re-Inquiry on Thompson, and Haytko's
(1997) "Speaking of Fashion"", Journal of Consumer Research, 29 (3), 427-440.
Nakyinsige, K., Che Man, Y.B., Aghwan, Z.A., Zulkifli, I., Goh, Y.M., Abu Bakar, F., Al-Kahtani,
H.A., and Sazili, A.Q. (2013), “Stunning, and animal welfare from Islamic, and scientific
perspectives”, Meat Science, Vol. 95 No. 2, pp. 352-361.
Narayan, D. (2005) Measuring Empowerment: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives (Washington, The
World Bank).
Navaro-Yashin, Yael (2002). Faces of the State: Secularism, and Public Life in Turkey. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Omi, M., & Winat, H. (2013). Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s.
Routledge.
Peñaloza, Lisa, and Linda L. Price (1993), "Consumer resistance: a conceptual overview", Advances
in Consumer Research, 20 (1), 123-128.
Robertson, W. (1974). Ventilations. Cape Canaveral, FL: Howard Allen Enterprises.
Sen, AK (1985). Well-being, Agency, and Freedom. The Journal of Philosophy LXXXII, pp. 169-
221.
Strasser, Susan (1999), Waste, and Want: a Social History of Trash, New York: Holt Paperbacks.
State of the Global Islamic Economy Report DRIVING THE ISLAMIC ECONOMY
REVOLUTION 4.0. 7th ed., Dinar St, andard, 2019.
Slater, Don (1997), Consumer Culture, and Modernity, Oxford: Blackwell.
Shankar, Avi, Helene Cherrier, and Robin Canniford (2006), "Consumer empowerment: a
Foucauldian interpretation", European Journal of Marketing, 40 (9/10), 1013-1030
Soon, J., Ch, andia, M., and Regenstein, J. (2017), “Halal integrity in the food supply chain”, British
Food Journal, Vol. 119 No. 1, pp. 39-51.
Sun, J. (2007). Language, Meaning, and World Politics ―The Language of the Bush Administration,
and the Iraq War― Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Harvard University.
Sykes, G. M., & Matza, D. (1957). Techniques of Neutralization : A Theory of Delinquency.
American Sociological Review, 22(6), 664–670.

Thompson, Craig J., and Gokcen Coskuner-Balli (2007), "Countervailing market responses to
corporate co-optation, and the ideological recruitment of consumption communities", Journal
of Consumer Research, 34 (2), 135152
Thomson Reuters. (2017). State of the Global Islamic Economy Report 2016-2017. Retrieved from
https://ceif.iba.edu.pk/pdf/ThomsonReutersstateoftheGlobalIslamicEconomyReport201617.p
df
Thompson, Craig J. (2004), "Marketplace Mythology, and Discourses of Power", Journal of
Consumer Research, 31 (1), 162-180.
Trentmann, Frank (2007), "Citizenship, and consumption", Journal of Consumer Culture, 7 (2), 147-
158.
Zulfakar, M., Chan, C., and Jie, F. (2018), “Institutional forces on Australian halal meat supply chain
(AHMSC) operations”, Journal of Islamic Marketing, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 80-98.
Van Dijk, Teun., 1993, Discourse, Power, and Access, in C.R. Caldas (ed). Studies in Critical
Discourse Analyis. London: Routledge.
Van Dijk, Teun., 1995, Discourse Analysis as Ideology Analysis, Aldershot: Dartmouth Publication.
Van Dijk, Teun., 2000, ideology, and Discourse. Retrieved from http://www.in- society. Org/ teun
html.
Van Dijk,T. (2003).The discourse-knowledge interface. In Gilbert Weiss & Ruth Wodak (Eds.),
Critical discourse analysis. Theory, and interdisciplinarity. (pp. 85-109). Houndsmills, UK:
Palgrave-MacMillan. [34].
Van Dijk, Teun (2004). Politics, Ideology, and Discourse. In: Wodak, R (Ed), Encyclopedia of
Language, and Politics, Section Language, and Politics. Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu
Fabra
Van Dijk, T., 2008, Discourse, and Context: Cambridge University Press.
Van Dijk, T.(2009). Critical discourse studies: a Socio-cognitive approach. In R. Wodak, and
M. Meyer(eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: Sage,62-85.
Wiley, J., and Collegues, 2005, Webster New Dictionary, London: Cambridge University Press.
Wodak, R., and Meyer, M., 2009, Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, London: Sage, 2 nd
revised edition, in press.

Grudgings, Stuart, and Trinna Leong. “Competing Halal Standards Leave Food Industry with
Indigestion.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 15 June 2014, www.reuters.com/article/uk-food-
halal-idUSKBN0EQ15N20140615. 

Mukherjee, S. Romi. “Global Halal: Meat, Money, and Religion.” Religions, vol. 5, no. 1, 2014,
pp. 22–75., doi:10.3390/rel5010022. 

Karabat, Ayşe. “Hunger Games: Turkey Eyes Leading Middle East Role through Halal
Industry.” Middle East Eye, 2 Dec. 2018, www.middleeasteye.net/news/hunger-games-
turkey-eyes-leading-middle-east-role-through-halal-industry. 

Mandaville, P., Hamid, S. (2018, November 2018). Islam as statecraft: How governments use
religion in foreign policy. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/research/islam-as-
statecraft-how-governments-use-religion-in-foreign-policy/

“Islam in Southeast Asia: What Should US Policymakers Know?” The Stanley Foundation,
November 18-19, 2004, at http://stanleyfdn.org/initiatives/seasia/ events.php (Accessed Feb 22,
05)

Eliraz, Giora. “Indonesia's Nahdlatul Ulama: A Tolerant, Inclusive Message to the Arab Middle
East.” Middle East Institute, 1 Jan. 2021, www.mei.edu/publications/indonesias-nahdlatul-
ulama-tolerant-inclusive-message-arab-middle-east.