Three Malay bachelors had a long day at work. They gathered at one of their colleagues’ workplaces and started their journey back to their house, by foot. Along the way, they discussed ways to reward themselves for the hard day's work. One suggested dining out, but the rest disagreed, preferring to cook. So, they stopped halfway and bought a live chicken from a Chinese seller by the roadside. This was how business was conducted in the 1950s in Singapore. “Two katis, so three ringgits!” said the seller. The three men agreed to share the purchase. They carried the living chicken all the way home. Upon arriving, they were greeted by a man called Nyong who was sweeping the compounds of the village. The man teased the bachelors, “So who would cook for you?” Despite being unmarried, the men replied that they were trained to cook, and requested Nyong to slaughter the chicken.

That was the opening scene of the movie Bujang Lapok, one of the wellknown P. Ramlee comedies. While the film shared the struggles of young bachelors in pre-independent Singapore, scenes like this also encapsulate the lifestyle before the Islamic resurgence movement in the 1970s. Imagine how different the three bachelors would behave today. They could drop by a supermarket, choose slaughtered chickens from the freezer, and they could choose which part of it rather than purchasing the whole chicken. Being good Muslims, they can verify its halalness by looking at the halal logo indicated on the packaging, without needing to pass it to another Muslim to slaughter the chicken. The identity of the chicken owner is also unknown as the chicken might have been slaughtered at the slaughterhouse.

While once it was not uncommon for Muslims to patronize halal poultry without halal certification (because it did not yet exist), it is now almost unthinkable. A halal certificate symbolizes that the meat at a given supermarket is permitted for consumption, while the meat without such certification is deemed prohibited. The meat would have undergone a thorough process to meet halal standards.

The halal industry in Southeast Asia has been growing since the 1980s. It is a by-product of the Islamic resurgence (some referred to this period as Islamic revivalism or dakwah movement) which swept across the region in the 1970s and 1980s, witnessing the importation of ideologies from the Middle East such as Salafi-Wahhabism from Saudi Arabia, Shi’ism's vilayete- faqeh inspired by the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and the tarbiyah movement adapted from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Though competing with one another, these ideologies shared the common goal of establishing an Islamic socio-political order as an alternative to a Western order.