What Is Lawful and What Is Pure

If one considers this verse, there are many aḥkām here; and as to the first discussions, anyone working in the food industry certainly needs to read them closely and consult the tafsīr of them. For:

In place of all those things which the people of Makkah and others used arbitrarily to make lawful and unlawful, on a whim, according to their own feeling — Allah (swt) here lays down the laws of hunting, the laws of sacrifice, the laws of what is lawful and pure, and of what is unlawful and impure.

For this reason the first few verses contain ḥurrimat ʿalaykumu al-maytatu wa-l-dam: Allah (swt) speaks of what is prohibited to you — carrion, that which has not been slaughtered in the proper manner so that all the blood is drained. One of the benefits of Islamic slaughter is that it pumps out all the blood: when the three or four vessels and the trachea are cut at the throat, the heart is still beating, and this causes the greater part of the blood to be pumped out. The meat is therefore purer than when the animal is shot dead, or stunned to death, or killed in whatever other way. That is one of the reasons.

For this reason the later verse reads:

This is verse five, and it speaks of the food of the People of the Book in particular — no one else. The food of Hindus, Buddhists and the like would not be ḥalāl for us if they had done the sacrificing, the slaughtering; but that of Christians and Jews, if the slaughter is carried out properly, is technically lawful. It must, however, be done properly.

Many suppose that it suffices that Christians and Jews have done the slaughtering, in whatever manner. There is a large Jewish community in some areas, and they are very particular about what they do; but one is hard pressed to find Christians who do it in the way laid down in the Corinthians^* — it is in the Corinthians, it seems, in the Old Testament — which is to slaughter the animal at the throat. The Jews do it that way; among the Christians there is no community known to do so. Yet many say that Christian and Jewish food is ḥalāl by the Qur'an, which amounts to giving them carte blanche, a clear ticket: they may slaughter the animal in any manner, and we may eat it — whereas a Muslim had better slaughter it properly. How can such standards be applied? Of a Muslim it is said that the animal must be slaughtered properly, with Bismillāh and the rest; of a Christian or a Jew, that it does not matter — they may stun it to death, club it to death, kill it however they wish, and one may eat it because Allah has said so. That is not so; there is reasoning behind the ruling.

The ʿulamāʾ have accordingly shown that while the verse declares it ḥalāl, it does so because they would slaughter properly; at that time they were doing it properly. That is one of the reasons. So if a Christian or a Jew carries out the slaughter properly — granted that they are not the same Jews and Christians as before, yet they already held blasphemous beliefs in the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him), and Allah nonetheless declared it permitted, and the same Qur'an states it still — then technically it is permitted. This is not necessarily a good thing for the industry. In England, al-ḥamdu li-llāh, because the community did not take that direction, there is now a wonderful ḥalāl industry, something in which one can take real pride; whereas in many other countries, where they did not — where they simply reasoned that Jewish or Christian meat was available, or however they took it — there is no ḥalāl industry, and they suffer for it. Such is the way of the world: where a demand is created, a supply follows.