You Are What You Eat

So he must protect his stomach from the ḥarām. In other words, one has to guard one's stomach from what was prohibited. For the Muslim, this is part of the path. And it is interesting: the idea that you are what you eat is actually quite classic. In the book on The Medicine of the Prophet by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, which is a mediaeval text on prophetic medicine, he said that one of the reasons why the meat of vicious animals was prohibited is because one does not want to take on the qualities of that animal — like a lion or a tiger. And so there is the idea of guarding one's stomach. Now, obviously, pig and alcohol are absolutely prohibited for the Muslim. But this also involves food that was acquired through prohibited means. It is really strong in the Islamic tradition to avoid buying food with money that was not lawfully earned, because that would make the food prohibited as well. And there is a tradition that the Prophet Muhammad said: whoever eats the ḥarām, then his body that grows from that — the fire is more worthy of it. In other words, what one eats is very important. Among the early Muslims, Imam al-Qushayrī said, they were more concerned about what they put into their stomachs than about any other single practice that they were doing, other than the obligatory prayer and things like that. They were very, very wary about just guarding what they ate.

There is a wonderful book for people who like books, called Diet for a New America by John Robbins. One of the things that he says in there that is really interesting is that the animals in this country are literally terrorised. He called it animal Auschwitzes, where they live in terror constantly. And he said that there is a reality to that: this animal has a psyche; it has feelings. Animals do have emotions. And there is a reality to putting that out into the meat — that one is consuming an animal who has lived in terror all its life. Like veal: their short, terrified lives. And he felt that there is something in that which does affect us. And he thought that a lot of the anxiety of the American people, and a lot of the fears within our culture, are related to the fact that we are eating this stuff. It is a really interesting book. It is not a crazy book, not at all. It is a very thoughtful and interesting book for people: Diet for a New America by John Robbins. He was the Baskin and Robbins — he was one of the heirs to that empire, and he kind of gave it up. He went on a real tirade against the meat and dairy industry.

And it is interesting how powerful that industry is in this country, because, as anyone who went through school here knows, we were indoctrinated as children. There were the four food groups. Totally unscientific. Everybody knew it was. But that is what we were told: four food groups. Well, the National Academy for Health^***** decided to upgrade it, make it more scientific. Well, they did their food pyramid, which had meat and dairy as this tiny little thing up there. And the meat and dairy lobby, infuriated by this, lobbied heavily and actually changed the pyramid. So now there is a pyramid that has a bigger chunk of meat and dairy, not based on any scientific ground, but purely based on the power of one group to lobby in Washington. Very interesting.

He stops all matters until he ascertains the judgement Allah has decreed concerning them. This is the idea of taqwā, of wariness: to find out what is the ḥukm, what is the judgement in this thing? If one is going to buy and sell — because in Islam there are things that one cannot sell or buy, like things that do not benefit people. So there goes two-thirds of American industry. Walmart is down the drain.