Method, sources and limits
Midad reads an ingredients list and says, for every word that matters, what public sources say about it. It informs. It does not certify.
Data read on 10 November 2026
What the checker does
- Deterministic code reads the text (from a label, a product record or a transcribed photo) and splits it into ingredients.
- Each ingredient is recognised through a base of 29 rules and 2,258 terms written for Midad in nine languages, and through a lexicon of 6,847 ingredients derived from Open Food Facts.
- Each rule gives a state (halal, doubtful or haram), a reason and its sources: 40 cited documents, all public. The worst state found in the list wins.
- No artificial intelligence decides the verdict. In the app, a model can only transcribe a photo of a label into text; the verdict always comes out of this same code.
- This site and the app use the same engine file, checked by a set of hand-written cases.
The four verdicts
| HALAL | The checker recognises no forbidden or doubtful ingredient in what it read. |
| DOUBTFUL | There is a doubt: the origin is not stated, nor is the slaughter, or the bodies disagree. |
| HARAM | At least one ingredient is forbidden without dispute among the cited sources. |
| NO VERDICT | Not enough information to say anything: no list, or unrecognised words. |
Where the bodies differ
On these points, serious bodies say different things. Midad does not decide: it shows who says what and lets you set it. Here is each position and who holds it.
| Point | Position | Held by |
|---|---|---|
| Carmine (E120) | Not set | |
| I avoid it | ||
| I accept it | ||
| Shellac (E904) | Not set | |
| I avoid it | ||
| I accept it | ||
| Seafood other than fish | Not set | |
| Everything that lives in water is permitted | ||
| Only fish | ||
| Alcohol as a carrier or added | No alcohol at all | |
| Follow the certification bodies | ||
| Accepted if it does not intoxicate | ||
| Wine vinegar | I accept it | |
| I avoid it | ||
| Animal rennet | Halal slaughter required | |
| It is enough that it is not pork | ||
| Meat without a halal mention | Only with attested halal slaughter | |
| Meat of the People of the Book permitted | ||
| Insects (except locust) | I avoid them | |
| I accept them |
Sources
40 documents, read and cited on 10 November 2026. Each quotation is in its original language, with a link to the document.
- Codex Alimentarius
- Dar al-Ifta (Egypt)
- Department of Standards Malaysia
- Diyanet (Turkey)
- Diyanet, Higher Board of Religious Affairs (Turkey)
- GIMDES (Turkey)
- IFANCA (USA)
- IIFA
- IIFA (International Islamic Fiqh Academy)
- Mufti of the Federal Territories (Malaysia)
- MUI (Indonesia)
- MUIS (Singapore)
- Muzakarah of the National Fatwa Council (Malaysia)
- SANHA (South Africa)
What Midad does not do
- It certifies nothing. A certification is asked of the producer, from a certifying body.
- It is not a religious ruling. For a question of substance, ask a qualified person.
- No scholar has reviewed this base. It rests on cited public documents, read by the project team. We say so because it is true.
- It does not judge the method of slaughter: you cannot read it on a label. It says whether the label mentions it, and what the bodies say.
- It does not see what the label leaves out: the origin of a flavouring, an enzyme or the rennet of a cheese is noted, not guessed.
- It reads names. It does not know how a product was made, nor whether the recipe has changed since the photo.
Data
The names of ingredients and additives come from the Open Food Facts taxonomies, published under the ODbL licence; Midad’s lexicon is a derived database offered under the same licence. The rules, reasons and texts are Midad’s own. Data read on 10 November 2026.
A mistake?
If a verdict looks wrong to you, say so. Every correction is published with its date.