Othan Than Pigs, Are All Other Animals Halal?
Dear Nadeem, The distinction between halal and haram animals in the Qur’an, jurisprudentially speaking, is based on the distinction between beastliness/predation of prey and grazing animals. Thereby, all animals that are beastly in nature, prey on other animals, tear the flesh and blood of other animals apart like lions, tigers, dogs, are by application of the jurisprudential principle, haram. Animals that graze on grass or other plants, shrubs, bushes are halal for man to eat in the name of God. Like cows, buffaloes, sheep, goats among other examples. In the case of direct prohibitions as to a specific animal, flesh and blood of pig is disallowed to Muslims specifically; solely because of the reason that humans, in their narrow perception, could have easily construed the pig as a ‘charinda’ or grazing animal, which it is, to some extent, but rarely has it been seen that a pig has hesitated from consuming meat of animals, even hunting large prey (in the case of wild boars) and thus, it became necessary for God, in his infinite wisdom, to clarify whether the pig is permissible or not, based on the aforementioned principle. In the case of fish, the Lord has permitted us to pursue all water-game. Thereby, all fish are by virtue of God’s decree are halal. Except those that are found dead on the sea surface, for those are prohibited by God in the Qur’an (“forbidden to you is dead meat”). In the case of the elephant, you may have heard that all animals with fangs and talons are prohibited, what you may be suprised to know, is that the prohibition on animals with regards to their fangs and talon is to the extent of the animals using them for hunting and preying (beastliness), thereby making them proscribed. In the case of the elephant, it has large tusks, although not used for hunting or preying, so it may be considered halal, to the best of my knowledge. In the case of donkeys, there is difference of opinion, but the prominent position is that the wild donkeys like onager and kulan are permissible. Domesticated donkeys, in accordance with a hadith reported from the Prophet, may be proscribed or prohibitively disliked, but we cannot say for sure, since it’s only a hadith and no jurisprudential injunction can be extracted or reasoned from hadith, except as corroborative evidence of the injunctions in the Qur’an. I truly hope this answers your questions. For more in the same context, read Surah Al Maidah, translated into English.
The view that the pig is the centre of prohibition in the Qur’an is wrong. A black and white distinction in terms of hillat/hurmat has been done by God, not limited to the pig but any animal not falling under ‘tayyabat’. The classification as to what is ‘tayyab’ and what is ‘khabith’, has to be based on the ‘A Priori knowledge principle’ – the idea that God has deposited, within you, the consciousness of right and wrong, bad and God, dirty and pure etc; requiring only an environment to bloom. The nafs is pre-fitted and equipped upon birth to distinguish good and bad, right and wrong, polluted and pure among other extremes of human experience and subjective collective consciousness. To come back to the original question, since khabaith are proscribed, the principle to be followed here is that of analogical reasoning (qiyas) to determine the grounds on which the pig was prohibited and in effect, all other animals related to the category described above. Just as long as the illah’ of the ruling is followed, the distinction between prohibited stuff and halal stuff becomes plain as day. This is how the Qur’an is interpreted: as a matter of fact, you would be suprised to know that most of the major nations in the world having Islamic populations and the concept of personal law actually consider ‘qiyas’ to be source of law (including India), equivalent to the Glorious word of God and the Sunnah in terms of interdependent equivalence of jurisprudential value. Thank you.