Seafood (4)

Following the last blog, one of the avid readers of the blog asked for a slight clarification. The previous blog (and this blog) are not saying that all food on the earth is Halal. It is saying that:
- IF you do not receive any evidence from other verses or narrations, this would be the base position
- Or IF there are only contradictory narrations and you cannot choose one group over another, then both are discarded, and this is the base position
Therefore, the idea is that food from the earth is Halal, unless you find evidence to the contrary.

In the last blog, we discussed the general Qur`anic principle that everything in the Earth is Halal (with the proviso given above). We now can look at another principle, which says that given no evidence to the contrary, food is Halal (with the proviso given above).

Firstly, he quotes the Qur`anic verse:
Say: "I find not in the message received by me by inspiration any (meat) forbidden to be eaten by one who wishes to eat it, unless it be dead meat, or blood poured forth, or the flesh of swine,- for it is an abomination - or, what is impious, (meat) on which a name has been invoked, other than God’s". But (even so), if a person is forced by necessity, without wilful disobedience, nor transgressing due limits,- thy Lord is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. (1)

This was revealed in response to the Kuffar who used to say certain things were Haram. Allah was teaching the Prophet that there was nothing Haram in what was given by Allah other than eating something dead, or blood or pork. It seems to be quite clear in noting that the base position, is Halal.

There are two arguments brought against this:

1. Some may argue that this only applies to land animals. The response is quite obvious: that there is no restriction mentioned, so it must also apply to sea animals!
2. There are many foods that are Haram to eat in Shari’a which are not mentioned in this verse e.g. eating snake and dog…etc. (agreed upon by all) which means that this cannot be meant in the way assumed. However, the response is that this does not affect the general base position. It just means that there are exceptions in narrations, which is what we will look at in later blogs.


There are also many Sahih narrations where the Imams were asked whether a particular type of sea or land animal was Haram, to which they responded using the verse above. There are a lot of these narrations mentioned in the footnotes of his book, but I will mention one of them:

In a sahih narration of Muhammad ibn Muslim (2): “He said I asked Abu Abdullah about ‘jari’, ‘maarmaahi’ and ‘zumayyar’ (3) and fish which do not have scales – are they Haram? He said to me: ‘O Muhammad, read this verse in which it says…[refer to verse above]…so I read it until I completed it, after which he said: Indeed what is Haram is that which Allah and His messenger have prohibited in His book …”

In the next blog, we will look at the most famous and important general Qur`anic principle in this regard, and that is that all marine life is Halal [with the previous proviso]. After that, we will move onto the core of the issue, and that is the narrations on the topic!

(1) Qur`an, Surah An’am: 6:145
(2) Wasa`il al-Shia, Volume 24, Page 136, Chapter 4 on Haram foods)
(3) These are three types of fish without scales