Interest in Halal hits all-time high thanks to French controversy

The worldwide interest for Halal peaked at its highest last Valentine’s Day when news first broke over the French Halal brouhaha.

Besides the mayor of Roubaix who protested over the switch to Halal meat by some Quick outlets in France, Halal also stayed high thanks to news generated by El Asira, an online Halal sex store in Holland, and the launch of Halal Scanner, an E-number scanning app for iPhone.

According to Google Trends, a tool that aggregates the world’s interest from news generated over a particular topic, Halal breached the 2.0 level on the Google Search Volume Index in February 14.

In comparison, Kosher only breached the 2.0 level twice, while Vegetarian, Organic or even Jesus never made it past 1.5. With a steady increase since 2004, Halal has been enjoying an expanding followings worldwide, especially within Malay and Indonesian speaking countries of South East Asia.

Morocco, United Arab Emirates, the UK and Australia formed the next line of followings, coming after Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia which between the three countries generated over 80% of worldwide interest for Halal.

In addition, Halal-related businesses, both traditional and online, have also been steadily increasing in recent months. Fresh Halal service providers like HalalBuzz, ProductiveMuslims, HalalTrip, CrescentRating and HalalMedia are just but a few new entrants to the elite online Halal community.

Check out Google Trends (click to generate a new query).