What We Know Why and What We Do Not

As to the rationale for the prohibition of pork: there are two things in the Sharīʿah that are understood by the Muslims. One is that there are some things whose reason we know, and there are other things whose reason we do not. The things that we know with absolute certainty are those things where we are told, in the Qurʾān or in the hadith, that this is why it was prohibited. For instance, the Qurʾān says: do not go near sexual perversions, because they are foulness and they lead down a terrible road.

So with illicit sexual relations, the idea is that they will lead down a terrible road. There is a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) that perversity will never manifest in a people without their being afflicted with diseases and illnesses that were unknown to the previous generations. So the Muslims would see that breaching the sexual laws that are given by God — from the Muslim perspective — has results; there are consequences. In other words, the moral realm has laws that impact us at the biological level, at the psychosocial level, just as there are physical laws of cause and effect and things like that. So Muslims see that morality is not an arbitrary thing: there is a reason. This is the way the Muslims view it, and a lot of Christians have that feeling too. A lot of Christians point out that if one is monogamous — if two people who are both virgins enter into a marital situation and do not breach those boundaries, they are not susceptible to venereal diseases. It is a simple fact of biology. So that is at one level.

The other level is that there are things where we do not know why God has said: do not do this. And the reason the scholars give for there being some things He has not told us is, first, that it is a test — will you do it even though your intellect is not fully capable of comprehending the wisdom behind it? — and, second, that it is an aspect of submission again. The scholars have always encouraged seeking reasons and wisdoms, to increase people's faith; but never to say, as an absolute: this is why.

Concerning the pig, generally the pig has been considered an unclean animal. It eats unclean things; its form is an unclean form. Some modern Jews of the Reform Jewish tradition, some of whom have gone to very liberal positions, have pointed out that this was really about trichinosis and related diseases, and that now that these are understood scientifically, they would actually consider it acceptable to eat pig. The Muslims would never go to that.

As for shellfish: shellfish is discouraged according to Imam Abū Ḥanīfah. But the reason that it is not prohibited is that there is a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) that what comes out of the sea is pure and ḥalāl for you, and that is where it comes from. Abū Ḥanīfah did consider it makrūh, disliked, to eat shellfish, because it ate unclean things; that was the reason that he gave. So that is a position, but it is not a dominant position. And again, one of the things that the Qurʾān mentions is that part of the Prophet's message was to lighten the load of the previous dispensations. So there is actually some lightening of loads concerning what was binding in the Jewish tradition, from the point that people were getting weaker at maintaining the guidelines of God, and so there was a kind of making it easier for people for this last stage of human existence, because people do not have the same spiritual capacities as the ancients did. So there is that idea as well.