There seems to be a lot of rumour going around at the moment and its important to look at the facts.

Since a few days there has been word of mouth information being passed arouns about Cadbury's chocolate being haraam. Some word of mouth has developed further - "all those chocolates found with a red dot on the packet are haraam, those without are allowed", and stories of "Muslims declaring jihad on Cadbury's".

As always, there is rarely smoke without fire and all these stories must have started somewhere.

The smoke is from a story in Malaysia. In Malaysia, a Muslim country, there are tests carried out on products to confirm their suitability for Muslims.

In two product samples, the laboratories detected pork DNA. Those product samples have been withdrawn. While further samples have not been found contaminated with pork DNA, until the source is found, those two products are not going to be allowed to be sold in Malaysia.

It is entirely possible that the laboratory equipment was erroneous in its detection, or became contaminated with the DNA through another means and not the cadburys products being sampled. Either way, Malaysian authorities have themselves declared halaal for consumption. Further tests carried out by Malaysian authorities have not found any further contamination. Indonesia and Saudi Arabia are also running independent tests and so far have not found any contamination or pork DNA. and suggestions are that

So all us chocaholics can about declaring jihad on Cadbury's and keep eating chocolate for another 3 weeks, when it can only be consumed in the night (for those reading this at a later date, its around 3 weeks to Ramadan).

Something else to remember is that as Muslims we should always verify the story before spreading gossip and rumours - that is something that the prophet advised and unlike that the pro-militancy individuals state, it is not limited to only news recieved from non-muslims.

(For the eagle eyes amongst you, I know Twisx is not a Cadbury's brand. But it was all I had to hand that I could take a picture of.)