The secret plot to feed us Muslim food!

The secret machinations of sneaky Muslims trying to trick westerners into eating Islamic food hasn't gotten much ink in the United States, but over in Great Britain, the watchdog reporters at the Daily Mail are alert to the vital issue. 

The headline in the paper (in black all capital letters)  is "Millions are eating halal food without knowing it." As Robert Anton Wilson scholar Jesse Walker points out in his excellent Reason magazine post, "Halal food is basically the Islamic counterpart to kosher food, so this is essentially equivalent to a paper breathlessly announcing that "MILLIONS ARE EATING KOSHER FOOD WITHOUT KNOWING IT." Or, if you want to make the barely concealed subtext explicit, "RABBIS ARE PUTTING SOME WEIRD JEW-SPELL ON YOUR MEALS."

Tyler Cowen, in his food book An Economist Gets Lunch, suggested that Indian food fans should seek out Pakistani restaurants, preferably those that have pictures of Mecca on the wall. Tyler's point is that such restaurants would have little appeal for most Americans and so will serve authentic food. At least, that's Tyler's purported reasoning, although I suppose we should not discount the possibility that he's part of a cabal of American college professors trying to smuggle Sharia food into our stomachs.

No food with exotic spices, please. We're British!

Is there such a thing as kosher haggis or halal haggis?