Hides Not Yet Treated

The same first condition of cleanliness goes unmet by any dead animal worn on the body, or, as the books put it, any hide that has not yet been treated. As mentioned in the part before this, the hide of any animal is lawful except that of the pig, and, according to some of the ʿulamāʾ, the elephant as well; mink fur, and fur coats generally, fall under the same rule of treatment. What "untreated" means is this: once an animal is slaughtered and skinned, the raw hide that comes off it is dirty, filthy, and must go through a whole process — washing, salting, chemical upon chemical, lying under the sun for days on end — what used to be called, in the old term for it, the tannery, where all of this was once carried out — before it turns into the proper leather from which jackets, and things of that kind, are actually made. In its earlier condition, the original condition in which it came off the animal, it remains najis, and cannot be used at all — it is not lawful until it has gone through that tannery process and been treated. All the other animals, and furs — mink furs included — are lawful.

There is not a single thing in Islam about which the ruling runs otherwise than this: everything, in essence, is lawful, mubāḥ, unless and until it is expressly stated to be unlawful in Islam, in the Sharīʿah. Take any object at all: is there anything in the Sharīʿah that declares it unlawful? If not, then it is lawful — mubāḥ, permissible — and this is the ruling for anything not specifically named as forbidden. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) likewise speaks of leather requiring such treatment, and the fuqahāʾ teach in the clearest terms that unless a hide is treated, unless it goes through that tanning process, it remains unclean, najis; once it has gone through it, it becomes clean — except for pig leather, which is unlawful and najis in its own right, li-ʿaynihi, on its own account, and no matter how thoroughly it is treated it never, ever, ever becomes lawful, unless Allah (swt) were Himself to change the āyah in the Qurʾān — and since that is an impossibility, it remains unlawful, full stop. Untreated hide of any other kind, by contrast, is unlawful only on account of the najāsah still upon it, and becomes clean and usable the moment that najāsah is properly removed through treatment.

Meat carries a related rule. Touching lawful meat does not break wuḍūʾ — lawful meat is simply lawful meat — but touching meat known, with complete certainty, to have been slaughtered in a name other than Allah's is najis as well, and cannot be carried into prayer: a pocket cannot hold unlawful biltong, or sujuk, at the moment takbīr is said to open ṣalāh, once it is known for certain that the sujuk in question is unlawful.