Imam ‘Abdullah ‘Azzam
Language: English | Format: PDF | Pages: 52 | Size: 1 MB
“…During my visits to the West, and when I am being served meals on
planes or in restaurants in Europe or America, I would find that I was
very hesitant to eat the food, and I wanted very much to search for
halal food and find that pure bite to eat in order to protect any part
of my flesh from being nourished on haram, as the Fire is more deserving
of every bit of flesh nourished on the haram…”
This is a treatise that I had written a
few years ago at the start of my frequent visits to the West –
especially America – to attend student conferences organized by the
Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA) that have been held until this
year, and it is an annual conference that takes place during Christmas,
which falls at the end of each Gregorian year. MAYA was the precursor to
many Islamic organizations, and the Muslim Youth Association in America
was formed from the Muslim Student Association (MSA), which initially
was composed of just thirteen students in Chicago.
And this issue has concerned me on my
travels, and I exhausted myself in investigating it. If there is
anything I could forget, I could never forget my visit to Spain as I was
making my way around Grenada and Cordova, as the Islamic awakening
there had not yet led to any viable communities forming that could
operate their own markets and shops, especially those for halal foods
and meats. So, I would spend most of my trip eating roasted pistachios.
I dug deeply into this issue – and it
deserves to be dug into deeply – as the West has its own system of life.
Carcasses and pork are not considered prohibitions in their daily life.
In fact, pork and lard are ingredients in many products and desserts,
and the life of the Muslim in the West has become unbearable considering
the temptations that surround him and the prohibited ingredients that
are found in most foods – in many places, you will find that even bread
is made with lard!
The problem also has spread to most of
the Muslim lands, with the Muslim populations and nations importing meat
from Communist and Western nations without giving any consideration as
to the status of the permissibility of such meat. When concerns are
raised here and there from those who are hesitant to eat imported meat, a
simple seal is placed on the meat that says ‘Slaughtered Islamically.’
So, if a country does respond to some concerns, it sends an envoy from
the Department of Commerce to the slaughterhouse to task the embassy in
the country from which the meat is coming to supervise the process of
slaughtering. The problem is that the issue usually means nothing to the
diplomats who work in these embassies of the Muslim countries in the
Western or Eastern world. They usually pay no attention to it, let alone
spend all of their time in slaughterhouses making sure Allah is
mentioned at the time of slaughtering, mentioning and exalting Him
whenever another animal is slaughtered. To make matters worse, commerce
officials in the Islamic world don’t care much for this issue as they
consider it a manifestation of backwardness, closedmindedness, and
strictness on the part of religious people due to their so-called
extremism.
Also, what would you say if you knew that
many commerce officials in some Muslim countries – those who are
responsible for declaring what foods are religiously permissible or
prohibited – are Christians who refuse to import products from the
Muslim nation of Turkey, and accept only to import meat from the Eastern
nations like Bulgaria? This is despite the fact that Turkish meat is
generally cleaner and cheaper.
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Table of Contents
Introduction to the 2nd Edition
Introduction to the 1st Edition
Definition of Dhaka’
The Categories of Animals
The Conditions of Slaughtering
The Slaughterer
Where the Cut Is to Be Made
Can We Ask When We Are Uncertain?
The Default Ruling for Meat in General
The Ruling on Meat Slaughtered in the West
The Solution
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