ABSTRACT
Halal tourism has emerged as a new form of tourism for Muslim tourists. Surprisingly, this form of tourism seems to find a place in all types of tourism, including, for example, religious/Islamic pilgrimage, cruise tourism, city tourism, mass tourism, or tourism in ‘deviant’ destinations. Halal tourism has been reduced to a market supply and demand orientation regardless of the true meaning of the Islamic religion or Muslims’ religiosity. The halal in halal tourism embodies products which are Islamic Sharia compliant, such as halal buffet, halal food, halal swimming pools, halal restaurants, and other halalised consumer corners. While halal tourism has received the attention of academics and practitioners recently, accounts on this form of tourism remains mostly uncritical. This chapter has delved into the task of offering a critical analysis of halal tourism, and its critical idea suggests that halal tourism has nothing to do with Islam but is only a supply and demand idea washed in religion. For halal tourism to exist there must be halal tourists. From this perspective, halal tourists are also tourists englobed in a form of pseudo religion and who buy halal products during their travel to safeguard their Islamic salvation in a worldly society. The chapter introduces the ‘Halal tourism bubble’ to denote this understanding.
