On April 10, Muslims all over the world celebrated Eid Al-Fitr, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. But for the small Muslim community in Guam, restricted access to halal foods makes celebrating a lot harder. KPRG's Naina Rao has more.
TRANSCRIPT
Naina Rao: On a recent evening, the adhan -- or Muslim prayer -- rings out from Guam’s ONLY mosque… called Masjid Al-Noor. Calling those who are observing Ramadan together to break their fast. This is also known as iftar.
Zhasmina Eshanova: In this mosque, there’s many different cultures, which is amazing.
Rao: That’s Zhasmina Eshanova. She’s a regular attendee of Al-Noor’s weekend iftars.
From Uzbekistan, Eshanova is one of only about 50 Muslims on Guam. Most have come here from somewhere else for jobs – Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Jordan. Like Shaha Jiffry, who manages day-to-day operations at the mosque.
Shaha Jiffry: People come and go, but we’re not alone. We have a whole Muslim community, just like family. We take care of everybody.
Rao: In front of us, dishes are spread out across an L-shaped table near the kitchen. Pancit, rice with shrimp, roasted turkey. But here’s the catch: it all needs to be halal. That means foods that are Islamically permissible to eat. In the Qu’ran, which is Islam’s holy book and central scripture, pork and alcohol are forbidden to consume. So, halal foods are free from any of these components. For meats to be halal, the animals must be raised, killed, and prepared as humanely and painlessly as possible, with a pronouncement of God’s name during the slaughter.
Ideally, the Qu’ran says Muslims would eat halal year-round. But it’s especially important during Ramadan because it’s a time of spiritual discipline.
Khalid Khan: When we first came, it was a little bit of shock that majority of things is pork.
Rao: That’s Imam Khalid Khan. He and his family moved to Guam from California a year and a half ago. They recently opened a small, Muslim community center in Tamuning.
Khan: So if we go out, especially like festivals and whatnot, we cannot eat out, or we cannot get the local food because everything is pork.
Rao: Pork is highly popular in Guam due to its historical and cultural influences, which is in itself a whole other story. But what you need to know is that, according to Guampedia, Guamanians, on average eat more than 16 cans of spam per person, annually. Spam is canned pork that can be eaten raw or cooked. And this makes the island one of the highest per capita consumers of spam in the world.
Khan gradually found a few restaurants on the island that serve halal options, like Singh’s cafe in Micronesia Mall, and Dr. Kabob’s in Agana. While limited, the mosque’s Shaha Jiffry thinks it’s better than nothing.
Jiffry: We had to make sure everybody is halal on, at least Ramadan. But it’s expensive.
Rao: At Pomika Sales — one of the few stores on Guam that sell halal items — a pound of a rack of halal lamb costs around $43. While other non-halal grocery stores would sell that same pound for $19.99.
Kavita Hemlani-Re’ is the owner.
Kavita Hemlani-Re': For halal, the challenge is the shipping. It costs.
Rao: She says it’s a balancing act to keep the halal items reasonably priced and also keep business afloat.
Hemlani-Re': So whatever price we’re getting, we have to take into account our shipping, our overhead, I gotta pay my staff, so it’s all these considerations.
Rao: And, indeed, shipping to Guam is expensive. It’s nearly 7,000 miles from the U-S West Coast. Items are, on average, 30 to 40 percent more expensive than the States because of the Jones Act.
The 1920 war-era law requires goods shipped between U-S ports to be transported on U-S ships with U-S crews.
Ken Choie is an economist at the University of Guam, or U-O-G. He also says ships themselves cost more to build – an expense that is passed on to customers.
Ken Choie: The mariners who are manning the boats, most of them are U-S citizens, and they have a much higher wages than, let’s say, Korean vessels manned by Filipinos.
Rao: But for halal products, there’s another financial burden.
Bob Barber: It’s called an inelastic product.
Rao: Bob Barber is an Agricultural Economist at U-O-G as well. He says because the Muslim population is so small, not many sellers have the incentive to bring halal products in. And the few ones that do…
Barber: Can charge a higher price because the people will pay the higher price. It’s the only thing they can eat. They can’t eat the alternatives.
Rao: Isla Public Media called around to halal grocery stores in Houston, Detroit, and Seattle, and found prices for a pound of halal lamb that range from as little as five-dollars to 13-dollars.
Barber: Because the Muslim population is larger there, people are willing to supply it. Therefore, the price comes down.
Rao: Pomika sales owner Kavita Hemlani-Re’ gets it. She agrees that this is why some halal products are quite expensive for customers. That’s why keeping that balancing act is tough for her.
Hemlani-Re': Unfortunately, by the time you actually get something here, something that’s $5 could be like two, three, four times the price / And then, you look at, okay, how much money am I making? Is it enough to keep the lights on? To keep the staff going, and have some money left over for my family?
Rao: She says if shipping halal items to her store were cheaper -- she could spend MORE MONEY on halal variety.
Hemlani-Re': There’s things that I would like to carry / I’d love to bring in Halal noodles / but we don’t because, I think about it like, is this something I feel like it’s a fair price? Would I pay this price for it? / So it has to be reasonable enough for people to want to have it, and try it, and enjoy it.
Rao: In fact, economist Ken Choie says it would be cheaper if all goods were shipped directly to Guam. For now, halal foods made in Muslim-majority countries like Indonesia…
Choie: Go to mainland USA first, and then from there, to the rest of the country. Guam is at the bottom of the list, because the volume of the demand is so small, tiny. It doesn’t make sense for some company in Indonesia to make specific delivery to Guam.
Rao: Back at the mosque, Shaha Jiffry says it helps to have some halal options during Ramadan, even if they’re limited and pricey. It’s just not economically sustainable to consume it all year long. So, when it’s not Ramadan, she says Bismillah – a prayer that means ‘in the name of God’ – before eating non-halal food.
Jiffry: What else to do? Children have to grow up. My father used to tell me, just say Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, and Allah knows that you can’t find halal.
Rao: For K-P-R-G News, I’m Naina Rao.
