HALAL CAFÉ CULTURE IN KAMPONG GLAM: A MANIFESTATION OF MALAY MUSLIM MIDDLE-CLASS ASPIRATIONS

Abstract

This thesis studies how the consuming secular desires of middle-class Muslims are eradicating the distinctions between the Malay Muslim middle-class and other middle-class groups. Situating my research on halal cafe culture as a product of market interactions between middle-class entrepreneurs and consumers, I argue that food consumption is an understudied aspect of middleclass modern consumption, especially among the Malay community. Using the emergence of halal Western food cafes in Kampong Glam as case studies, this thesis is therefore significant in problematising the unquestioned assumption that an Islamic discourse on food consumption is a push for conservatism. Malay Muslim middle-class groups' aspirations to consume Western foods are after all reshaping the traditional food consumption patterns of the community; challenging a puritan Islamic discourse of food consumption that rejects all forms of Western values, practices and lifestyle. By extension, this conformity to the mainstream consumption of Western foods hence threatens the conservative rhetoric of an alternative Muslim modernity.