Defining Ḥalāl and Ḥarām

Understanding what makes food ḥalāl or ḥarām requires knowledge, and seeking that knowledge is itself farḍ. As the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) is reported to have said, Ṭalab al-ʿilm farīḍatun ʿalā kulli Muslimin wa Muslimah^** — seeking knowledge is farḍ upon every Muslim man and every Muslim woman alike, without exception; this is not knowledge reserved for men only. What, then, is this particular ʿilm? Among its several meanings, the one relevant here is knowing what constitutes ḥalāl food and what constitutes ḥarām food — without that knowledge, the chances of falling into ḥarām are high, and acquiring it is itself an obligation.

There is not a Muslim on earth who does not know that eating pork, khinzīr, is ḥarām — it is taught to children from a young age. Every Muslim likewise knows that alcohol, and any intoxicant, is ḥarām; every drug that distorts the mind, every illicit substance that brings on intoxication, falls under the same ruling, including the cannabis that some Muslims try to justify smoking — no hashish, no water-pipe with any such additive in it, may Allah (swt) protect us and protect you. Allah (swt) will ask what was known of ḥalāl and ḥarām; whoever does not know the ḥarāms falls into them unknowingly. Consider a tourist arriving in Melbourne unaware, having never read the news, at the height of the swine flu outbreak — not bird flu, swine flu, H1N1 or some such designation — when Melbourne had the highest concentration of cases anywhere. Falling ill through that ignorance is, in a real sense, a person's own responsibility: before travelling to a country, it is the traveller's task to find out what is prevalent there, what sickness or epidemic is current, and to be inoculated accordingly. Before Ḥajj, pilgrims are told to be vaccinated against meningococcal disease, against swine flu, against yellow fever, against hepatitis B, hepatitis G, hepatitis Q — every letter of hepatitis there is — and against seasonal influenza if over the age of sixty-five — on the word of medical scientists and doctors. In exactly the same way, not knowing what is ḥarām in food means falling into ḥarām food constantly, every single day, since food is an essential part of existence. The knowledge has to be sought.

Ḥalāl, literally, means free, unknotted — what is permissible. In essence, everything, al-ashyāʾ, is ḥalāl unless the sharīʿah has said otherwise. "Brother, that might be ḥarām," someone might say of an unfamiliar fruit — red, oddly shaped, called a dragon fruit. "It's only a fruit." "No, no, I have to ask someone who knows." "Very well then, go and ask." But fruit has always been ḥalāl, unless it is taken through fermentation — grapes squeezed and fermented into a drink change their status entirely and become ḥarām, though the plain juice remains what it is. This has to be known, or a person falls into ḥarām without realising it. What is ḥalāl is whatever the sharīʿah approves, whatever sound minds and common sense approve — pure and wholesome in essence.

Ḥarām, by contrast, is a very limited category, and what falls into it is, almost without exception, harmful — to the body, the mind, the heart, or the society around it. Study any ḥarām in Islam and a real wisdom in the prohibition invariably comes to light; there is not a single instance where keeping away from it fails to do some good, or where doing it fails to bring some harm. Maqāṣid al-sharīʿah, the higher aims of the sacred law, are strict enough on this point that a person becomes a true Muslim, a person of taqwā, only once this knowledge — the difference between ḥarām and ḥalāl — is actually held. This is why so many of the ḥadīth collections, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī among them, carry the well-known ḥadīth of the Prophet (peace be upon him) that opens with the words al-ḥalālu bayyinun wa'l-ḥarāmu bayyin — "the lawful is clear, and the unlawful is clear" (one translation renders the pair as "legal" and "illegal"). There is nothing uncertain about either category in itself. Who made the ḥarām ḥarām, and the ḥalāl ḥalāl? Allah (swt), the lawgiver, and, with His permission, the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) — nobody else has ever had, or will ever have, the authority to turn a ḥalāl into a ḥarām or a ḥarām into a ḥalāl. The matter is settled and finished. Nobody may simply announce that a book is ḥarām because it is a book, that water is ḥarām, astaghfirullāh, when water is ḥalāl, or that apple juice is ḥarām, yā Laṭīf.