Islam has rules. If there’s one thing that the Quran is clear on it’s that Allah has things he wants humanity to do and ways he wants humanity to act. Some of those rules are prohibitions. The most famous of them is the prohibition against Muslims eating pork. and more generally pork products and meat from animals that slaughtered according to specific rules. Other prohibitions include drinking alcohol, charging interest and blaspheming, as well as others that vary from one denomination or individual Muslim to another. Things which are not permitted in Islam are referred to as haram, the opposite of halal which most non-religious scholars are likely only familiar with as the word for what amounts to Muslim kosher food. This concept can be rarefied as in the sociological theories of Emile Durkheim to argue that religion, or at least one of the major mechanisms of religion, is the division of the world into the spheres of the sacred or pure and the profane or impure, or at least mundane. This view has some basis in reality, but it ignores other aspects of religion such as the idea found in Hinduism that all things are potentially holy and connected with or part of the divine.
Islam has many prohibitions and makes a good case study. While Islam is not the only religion to have the concept that some things are pure and good and acceptable whereas other things are bad and impure and should be avoided it does have a fairly detailed and codified list of examples. Again, the most obvious example of this is food taboos, but the concept can be applied to a range of things including specific behaviors and combinations of things such as mixed gender company or mixing beef and cheese in Judaism. The question becomes why they exist. There are obvious reasons for some of them. Murder and adultery are acts that cause demonstrable harm to people and it’s easy to understand why prohibitions against them would exist on those grounds. The same can be said for prohibitions against usury, at least in some socio-economic contexts. But that does not work for some or even most religious prohibitions. Islam has many prohibitions that cannot be credibly described as being specifically for the health and well-being of believers and the people around them. The sanitary and hygienic arguments some have raised aside there really is no pressing reason why pork or shellfish are so unhealthy as to warrant a complete ban. One disciple of Durkheim described this sort of division between haram and halal as a creative act, “positively re-ordering our environment, making it conform to an idea” (Douglass 2). On this view prohibitions are the religious equivalent of straightening the chairs and mopping the floors in one’s kitchen to make it look good despite not serving any practical health purpose. We act in these ways as a form of solidarity and community, something that links one Muslim to all other Muslims.
That is an explanation for why dietary taboos and other prohibitions exist. The question is why these prohibitions without obvious reasons exist as opposed to some other one. If eating pork is not particularly harmful why are Muslims prohibited from drinking pork and not, for example, from wearing hats or rings? After all, if the rule is completely arbitrary then it could just as easily be some entirely different prohibition as long as it was consistently done. Further, the concept of separation between sacred and profane acts does not suffice to explain large aspects of Islam or other religions. Take the five pillars of Islam as an example. These are five fundamental injunctions that all Muslims are expected to strive to carry out. They consist of confessing that there is no God but God and that Muhammad is his prophet, praying five times a day, giving alms to the poor, fasting on Ramadan and making a pilgrimage to Mecca at some point one’s life if possible (Islam Guide). Of these injunctions only one, fasting, can be described as a prohibition. The others are positive injunctions to do specific things as part of being a Muslim. Moreover, giving alms to the poor is an example of mixing what most would call sacred and profane. After all, there is nothing more base, more commercial and more worldly than money. There is a reason why jokes about money being the root of all evil are so popular. If Muslims are expected to fulfill a duty of tending to the needy then it stands to reason that physical needs such as food and clothing and shelter are all of concern to Allah. Similarly, if pigs and pork are somehow genuinely unclean and impure it stands to reason that Allah created something unclean and impure and proceeded to make it not just edible but contrived to make it a common foodstuff. This makes no logical sense, so it follows that in some sense all things are at least potentially pure and holy, even if they are considered haram in certain contexts.
The stereotype about Islam being a religion full of prohibitions and separations between sacred and profane is one that has a basis in reality. Islam has many such divisions. But every division exists in context. It does not follow from the fact that it is for some reason haram for a Muslim to eat pork that pork and pigs in general are somehow evil. There is no call for Muslims to seek the extinction of pigs anymore than Jews want to wipe out shellfish. Moreover, Islam is at least as much defined by positive injunctions as negative prohibitions. To claim otherwise is to fail to understand the religion.
Works Cited
Douglass, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York: Routledge, 1966.
“What Are the Five Pillars of Islam?” Islam-Guide.com. Web. 1 March 2016.
