Are Today's Jews and Christians Still the People of the Book?

A further question naturally follows: could the Jews and Christians of today still be considered Ahl al-Kitāb? This is a question that troubles many Muslims. A number of modern scholars argue that they cannot be, on the ground that they have changed completely — that today's Christians and Jews are not the people who lived at the time of Rasūlullāh (peace be upon him), going to church and synagogue and worshipping Allah in their own manner, and that the Bible and the Torah have themselves changed into so many different shapes and forms over the fourteen hundred years since. Although this much is true, the conclusion drawn from it is not correct.

According to Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jamāʿah, the majority of the ʿulamāʾ — the jumhūr, the majority across every madhhab, every school of thought in Islam, old and new — hold that they are still to be considered Ahl al-Kitāb. They were mushrikīn before, and are mushrikīn still; they were kāfir before, and are kāfir still. Only the colour of their kufr has changed; nothing else has. They believed in the Trinity at the time of Rasūlullāh (peace be upon him), and believe in it now. They said ʿUzayr ibnullāh, as the Jews of Mūsā (as) used to say, and they killed their prophets — Yaḥyā (as) among others — in the past; the same people remain the same kāfir, nothing has changed, and yet they are still regarded as Ahl al-Kitāb.

Many examples can be given from the companions of Rasūlullāh (peace be upon him), from the generations after them among the Tābiʿūn and the Tābiʿ al-Tābiʿīn, and from the Imams of old and new alike, all of whom concur without exception that the Ahl al-Kitāb of former times and of today are exactly the same people. Shams al-Aʾimmah al-Sarakhsī, one of the greatest imams of the Ḥanafī school, says so in his famous work^***; Ibn al-Humām, again of the Ḥanafī school, says the same; and Ibn ʿĀbidīn, still the final word in the fiqh of the Aḥnāf, says the same. The Christians of old and of the present are, on their word, exactly the same — there is no difference at all. Only some modern scholars think otherwise, but the majority is what is followed: when there is a difference of opinion, even within a single school of thought, the jumhūr, the majority, is what is followed. This is itself a rule of Islam.

Shaykh Aḥmad al-Sharabāsī, a professor at al-Azhar University and head of a committee of ʿulamāʾ, carried out research of his own and published it in a book called Yasʾalūnaka, taking the Qurʾānic term for its title — yasʾalūnaka ʿan al-anfāl, yasʾalūnaka ʿan al-rūḥ, yasʾalūnaka, they ask you — the phrase recurs many times in the Qurʾān. On this particular question of Ahl al-Kitāb, the committee set out proofs, dalāʾil, from the Qurʾān and the Sunnah, together with what the Ṣaḥāba and the generations after them agreed upon, and found a consensus among the fuqahāʾ that the Ahl al-Kitāb of old and of today are one and the same. The late Mufti of Jordan, Qāḍī al-Quḍāt ʿAbdullāh al-Qalqīlī, and Shaykh Muḥammad Abū Bakr Maḥmūd al-Ghāma of Nigeria, a very famous scholar of the last century, say exactly the same, and hundreds more names could be given who concur. The Ahl al-Kitāb of old and of today are exactly the same: they were kāfir before and mushrik before, and remain so; nothing has changed, only the colour of their shirk has shifted somewhat. They still say that ʿĪsā, nāʿūdhu billāhi, is the son of God — the Trinity has not changed; the Jews are still the same Jews, the Torah still altered in their hands, and their rabbis still change matters as they go along.

This brings the third question: can the meat slaughtered by Ahl al-Kitāb be eaten? Is there textual proof for it, from the Qurʾān and from ṣaḥīḥ ḥadīth, and from the practice of the Ṣaḥāba, their children after them, and the practice of the Umma of Muḥammad (peace be upon him) ever since? Even granting that Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jamāʿah hold the Jews and Christians of today to be the same Ahl al-Kitāb as before, what of their slaughtered animals — may they be eaten? Two verses of the Qurʾān bear directly on this, interlinked with one another, and both are in Sūrat al-Māʾidah.