Halal Expo-2012

Moscow International Exhibition Halal Expo-2012

Rushan-hazrat Abbyasov, deputy chairman of the Council of Muftis of
Russia, chairman of the exhibition organizing committee

This year our exhibition has enlarged by 30% in terms of the number
of participating exhibitors. We see great interest coming fromvisitors, who enjoy learning and looking at the national, cultural, and
most importantly - religious customs of the Muslim peoples. If we now
look at the number of exhibitors, we will see the variety, you know, abright palette of today's representatives of different nations. And we
are very happy that today for the first time our show is marked by the
active participation of representatives of the North Caucasus. I am
talking about the great fashion house Firdaws of the Chechen republic
and one of the largest companies in the field of Internet andtelevision technologies, Risalat.ru, as well as other companies that
talked about and demonstrated their latest developments. And you know, I
think that today, after the first day, we see a large number ofvisitors, we see their interest, and I am not talking only about Islamic
and Muslim peoples. Non-Muslims come to this exhibition as well. They
are interested and they want to see what the word "halal" means. Afterall, halal was given not only to Islam, and not only by the prophet
Muhammad. This command comes from God, and goes back to the creation
of this world. Since God is the creator, he created this world for us
as well as certain conditions which we must follow, starting fromAdam, the first man and prophet, and ending with his last messenger, the
Prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, [peace be upon him].
And today we are very happy that we have such a great opportunity to
talk about and demonstrate the way of life, because halal is not just
about food, it is also about our culture, our traditions and customs,
which shine today. For Islam did not come to Russia a few years ago or
a few decades ago like it did in the West. We already have our own
culture; we already have certain traditions developed in relation to
our religion. And we are very pleased that our exhibition is veryinteresting not only to common visitors, but also to the high-level
officials who have come today. Our exhibition today will host morethan 25 delegations from different countries, from nearby countries as
well as from farther abroad. Our exhibition, having an international
status, shows the great diversity of the world of halal, which is now
being actively promoted. And most importantly – it exhibits useful and
permissible, from the perspective of God, according to his bestowment
upon us, food and clothing, and a variety of medications, drugs,jewellery and many more things. And I hope that those who have already
attended the exhibition and those who are going to come here will beable to find a lot of useful and interesting things, because these kinds
of events bring together our cultures and traditions. They are
primarily aimed at maintaining peace and harmony in our society,learning about each other, not making one nation afraid of another or one
religious tradition of another religious tradition. Namely, they are
aimed at maintaining interethnic and interreligious peace.

Karen Voskanyan, head of the Halal enterprise "Yusuf"

We have a new company, certified by the Council of Muftis of Russia.We make halal food in the production, which is operated 80-90% by
Muslims. We use only halal raw materials. Our chef is a multiple
champion of various exhibitions and culinary competitions. We work incatering, we have contracts with all the catering outlets at the airports of
Moscow.

Anastasia, director for development at the Persian tourism center

Our board demonstrates hand crafts from Iran, and anyone interested can
become familiar with them: look at them, learn from us how they
are done, where they are produced, where they can be purchased in
which Iranian city you can see, how they are produced by masters. We
have a representative from our tourist department at the exhibitionwhere people can become acquainted with Iran's tourism opportunities,
learn about travels to Iran, about various events that take placethere and what you can visit, how to have a vacation at the Iranian seaside, how to visit cultural attractions. We are exhibiting some
souvenirs. And, actually, we really like it here. We are taking part in the
"Halal" exhibition for the first time, our tourism department is
taking part in it for the first time, we like it very much and
everyone is very friendly to us. We always have a lot of people next
to our stand, they stop by and learn some things. For many, it is
unknown that one can go to Iran, and we are pleasantly surprised by
the interest of the people. We hope that this exhibition will bring us
more customers, more advantages, but also will allow us to refute some
information that Iran is a closed country. That is in general the aim
of our stand, the aim of our work: to debunk the myth that Iran is
something closed, unknown and dangerous.

Rudolph Angelov, head of production at "Agroimpeks-2000"

At the moment we are applying for "Halal" certificates, we are taking
part in this exhibition already for the second time. Our situation is
the following: our showcase exhibited here does not present all therange, so to say, all the wide range and variety of products we have,
but quite a considerable range - about forty products. I am the
production manager of this company and I would always be happy to work
with all potential buyers - wholesale, retail customers, with any one.The exhibition is very good, it has a very good atmosphere. We had here
at our tasting high-ranking officials such as Muftis, the deputy 
Sobyanin also stopped by here. Everyone was very, very pleased with
our products. I think it is certainly not our bottom line, we still
want to fight for the quality, and I think that we will be able to
provide people with quite serious, good products.

Representative of the SPLAT company

I represent the SPLAT company, the Russian developer and manufacturer
of innovative tools for oral care. This year we received the "Halal"
certificate, which confirms that all components used in manufacturing
of our products and the system of production meet the standards of
halal. We are present and have sales all over Russia as well as export
to 18 countries, including such countries as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan
and Azerbaijan. Our plans are the development of sales in the Middle
East and Southeast Asia, which in general have Muslim countries.

Representative of Salam World

We represent a global IT-project for Muslim social network Salam
World. Here we are presenting the Moscow branch of the project. Ourhead office is in Istanbul. Salam World is the general sponsor of theHalal Expo. In the next three years, we plan to attract about 50
million users. In principle, we have some reasons to expect that.
Based on the principle of social networks we create a community for
Muslims, for large Muslim organizations, commercial or public ones,
which are always very welcome, and we are ready to cooperate with
them.

Representative of Firdaws

I am presenting the products of the fashion house Firdaws. We have
collector's items, as well as casual wear. On June 10 we will have a
showing here, at Halal Expo, then we have an opening of a store at the
"Start" mall, then a fashion show in Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh and then
we will work on new collections.