Fatwā and Taqwā: What Is Permitted, and What Is Better Avoided

This is a matter of sharīʿah, of uṣūl al-fiqh. But a muttaqī Muslim — one who wishes to live a life of pure Islam, according to the Qurʾān and the Sunnah — faces a further consideration. Imam Ibn al-Humām of the Ḥanafī school holds that, except under genuine ḍarūra, necessity, it does not befit a Muslim to eat the slaughtering of Ahl al-Kitāb. An objection follows naturally enough: has it not just been said that this may be eaten, and now the same teaching says it should not be? The answer is that this is what the Imam himself says. One may still wish to eat it, and, on seeing a fellow Muslim doing so, say nothing and think no worse of him for it; but where the Muslim in question is known to be someone genuinely striving to be a good Muslim, the better counsel to give him is to buy instead from somewhere such as Madina Halal Meats, from somewhere ḥalāl — not to resort to such meat merely because it is cheap, or because it happens to be on special at Coles.

Consider that a Jew in Caulfield has his kosher butchers, and a Jew from as far away as Sunshine will travel there once or twice a week for kosher meat, because he holds it to be the only ḥalāl option open to him; a Muslim need not, by the same logic, pass his own ḥalāl butcher to buy slaughtered meat at Coles next door merely because a fatwā permits it. If one wishes to be muttaqī, there is a concept in Islam called waraʿ, avoiding what is doubtful, being cautious — whatever fatwā the muftis give, the counsel of Rasūlullāh (peace be upon him) is to ask one's own heart, and where the heart is not content, to keep away from it; there is always an alternative.

Where a fellow Muslim is seen eating meat slaughtered by Ahl al-Kitāb, however, he is not to be called a kāfir for it — astaghfirullāh al-raḥīm, ḥarām, ḥarām, and the like — since by any definition it is the food of Ahl al-Kitāb, and to speak this way only brings trouble upon the one who says it. Each person keeps away from doubtful things for himself, if that is the standard he wishes to hold to.