The Food of the People of the Book

A further verse follows soon after, in what is given here as the fourth verse of Sūrat al-Māʾidah, immediately after the one discussed above:^*******

The food, the slaughtering, of the Ahl al-Kitāb, the People of the Book, is made lawful to you. Some hold the opinion that no genuine Ahl al-Kitāb remain today, that all such communities have become mushrikūn or kuffār; that is an opinion, and it is respected as one, but the sharīʿah's own books give a different, more precise test. The fiqh works define Ahl al-Kitāb by a rule about places and regions: a locality's religion is read from the houses of worship that fill it. Adelaide, known as the city of churches, is judged Ahl al-Kitāb on this basis, since churches belong to Christians, not to Hindus; a place filled with Hindu temples is judged mushrikūn; a place filled with synagogues is judged Jewish, and Jewish communities are Ahl al-Kitāb. Ahl al-Kitāb is a distinct category: those who received a revealed book from Allah (swt) before Islam — Christians, the people of the Bible, and Jews, the people of the Torah.

By this, the slaughtering of Ahl al-Kitāb is, in principle, edible. The verse names a further condition — that Allah's (swt) name be invoked over it — and this holds where the invocation is actually witnessed: if a Christian or a Jewish person is seen, with one's own eyes, slaughtering an animal while invoking some other name — in the name of a Pope, of the Holy Father and the Holy Ghost, of an Archbishop, of a church, or of the sun — then that particular slaughtering is ḥarām for a Muslim to eat, notwithstanding that the person is Ahl al-Kitāb. But where nothing of this kind is witnessed — where a Christian friend, known to be Christian, offers beef, chicken, or fish (fish being lawful in any case), or goat, or camel if the household is Coptic or Assyrian Christian — there is no obligation to interrogate the host — Johnny, George, or Yorgo, whoever the friend may be — about whether Bismillāh was said over it. The verse's general rule, that the food of Ahl al-Kitāb is made lawful, applies as it stands.

The proof for this in the sunnah is extensive. At Khaybar, the Jews there sent meat to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him); he said Bismillāh and ate it, without turning to ask whether they themselves had said Bismillāh when they slaughtered it. Had the possibility existed that they had invoked some other name, or the name of an idol, over it, this could only apply where it was actually seen happening; otherwise the general rule — that the food of those given the Book is made lawful — applies as it stands.