Ala-Maududi
(5:3) Forbidden to you are carrion,[9] blood, the flesh of swine, the animal
slaughtered in any name other than Allah’s,[10] the animal which has either been
strangled, killed by blows, has died of a fall, by goring or that devoured by a beast of prey –
unless it be that which you yourselves might have slaughtered while it was still
alive[11] – and that which was slaughtered at the
altars.[12]–[13] You are also forbidden to seek knowledge of your fate by
divining arrows.[14] All these are sinful acts. This day the unbelievers have fully
despaired of your religion. Do not fear them; but fear Me.[15] This day I have
perfected for you your religion, and have bestowed upon you My bounty in full measure, and have
been pleased to assign for you Islam as your religion. (Follow, then, the lawful and unlawful
bounds enjoined upon you.)[16] As for he who is driven by hunger, without being
wilfully inclined to sin, surely Allah is All-Forgiving, All-Compassionate.[17]
9.’Carrion’ signifies the animal which has died a natural death.
10. This refers to the practice of pronouncing the name of anyone or anything other than God and
dedicating the animal, as an offering, to either a holy personage, god or goddess before
slaughtering. For details see (Surah
Al-Baqarah, ayat 173) note 171.
11. It is lawful to eat the flesh of an animal which may have suffered from any of the
above-mentioned accidents providing it was still alive until slaughtered. This verse also makes
it clear that the flesh of an animal becomes lawful only by slaughtering ritually, and that no
other method of killing is valid. The words dhabh and dhakah belong to the technical terminology
of Islam and denote slitting the throat so that the blood is completely drained from the
animal’s body. The disadvantage of killing an animal by either guillotine or strangulation is
that the greater part of the blood remains within the body, and at various places it sticks to
the flesh and forms congealed lumps. If an animal is slaughtered by slitting the throat, on the
other hand, the connection between mind and body remains intact for a short while, with the
result that the blood is thoroughly drained out from all the veins and the flesh becomes fully
cleansed of blood. We have just come across the injunction prohibiting the eating of blood. So
only that flesh which has been purged of blood is declared lawful.
12. The word nusub signifies all the places consecrated for offerings to others than the One True
God, regardless of whether they are images of wood, stone or something else.
13. The division of objects of eating and drinking into lawful and unlawful is based on their
moral rather than their medicinal properties. God has left matters relating to the physical
world to be tackled by man’s own effort and striving. It is for man himself to discover by his
own efforts which items of food and drink provide him with healthy nourishment and which are
useless and harmful. The Law (Shari’ah) does not take upon itself to guide man in such matters.
Had it undertaken such a task, perhaps one of the first things for it to do would have been to
pronounce the prohibition of arsenic oxide. But one will notice that the Qur’an and Hadith
mention neither arsenic oxide nor other things which either singly or jointly are fatal for man.
The underlying considerations of the Law with regard to the various items of eating and drinking
are their possible effects on man’s morals and on the purity of his soul. This is in addition to
the judgements that the Law makes with regard to the various means adopted by man in his quest
for food – whether they are appropriate according to Islamic standards or not. It is impossible
for man to determine what is beneficial and what is harmful for his morals; he has not been
endowed with the capacities needed to arrive at sound conclusions on these matters, and so he
frequently stumbles into error. Hence the Law undertakes to guide him in these matters and these
matters alone. Whatever has been prohibited by Islam has been prohibited because of its bad
effects on human morals, because of its repugnance to spiritual purity, and because of its
association with false beliefs. Things which have been declared lawful have been so declared
because they are untainted by these evils.
It may be asked why God did not specify the considerations underlying the prohibition of various
things for this would have afforded us very valuable insights. In reply, it must be pointed out
that it is impossible for us to fully grasp such considerations. The kind of questions we face
are for instance: What are the corrupting effects of the consumption of either blood or the
flesh of swine and carrion on our morals? The extent to which this corruption affects our
morals, and the way in which certain things affect our morals is a matter that we are incapable
of investigating, for we do not possess the means of weighing and measuring the moral properties
of various things. To mention some of these bad effects would carry little weight with the
sceptic, for how could he test the soundness of statements on such questions? Hence, God
considers faith rather than man’s own judgement as the main basis for observing the standards of
lawfulness and prohibition. Whoever is fully convinced that the Qur’an is the Book of God, that
the Prophet (peace be on him) was designated by Him, and that God is All-Knowing and All-Wise,
will necessarily commit himself to observe the restrictions enjoined by God regardless of
whether he is able to grasp the wisdom underlying them or not. Whoever lacks this basic
conviction will avoid only those evils which are fully evident to human beings, and will remain
a prey to all those which have not yet become apparent but which in fact are intrinsically
harmful.
14. The things which are prohibited in this verse fall into the following categories:
(1) Polytheistic divination, which is a form of omen-seeking whereby knowledge either about
one’s future or about matters beyond human perception, is sought from gods and goddesses. The
polytheists of Makka had consecrated the idol Hubal in the Ka’bah for this purpose. Seven arrows
had been placed at its altars and on each of them different words and sentences had been
inscribed. Whenever people were faced with the question whether a certain course was wise or
not, or they wanted to trace something lost, or sought a judgement in a murder case, or had
other similar problems, they would approach the oracle of Hubal, present him with an offering as
his fee, and pray to Hubal to issue a verdict on the question concerned. Then the oracle would
draw arrows, and the inscription on the arrow which fell to a person’s lot was deemed to
represent the verdict of Hubal.
(2) Superstitious divination, which has also been prohibited, means that instead of deciding the
problems of life in a rational way one should decide them on fanciful grounds. Or it could mean
deciding matters by arbitrary interpretation of accidental events, or to have one’s future
prophesied by means which have not been reasonably established as adequate for obtaining
knowledge about the future. This includes geomancy, astrology, fortune-telling and the numerous
other methods adopted to determine omens.
(3) Games of chance are also prohibited and include all those transactions in which what one
receives depends on chance and other purely accidental factors rather than on rational
considerations such as either due payment or recompense for services rendered. This applies, for
instance, to lotteries where the holder of an arbitrarily-drawn number receives a huge amount of
money which has been obtained from thousands of other people. It also applies to crossword
puzzles were the award of prizes does not depend on the actual correctness of the solution
(since several correct solutions are possible) but on accidental conformity with the particular
solution which is arbitrarily chosen as the only correct one by the sponsors of the puzzle.
After prohibiting each of these three categories, the only kind of lot-drawing which Islam
permits is that which one resorts to when obliged to make a decision either in favour of one of
numerous permissible options or in favour of one out of two or more equally legitimate
claimants. For instance, two persons have an equal claim over a thing which neither of them is
prepared to relinquish, and at the same time there is no reasonable basis for preferring one to
the other. In such a case, with the consent of the claimants, the matter may be settled by
drawing lots. The Prophet (peace be on him) himself used to resort to drawing lots when he had
to make a decision between two equal claimants, and when preferring one of them would cause
distress and grievance to the other. (For such instances see Ahmad b. Hanbal, Musnad, vol. 4, p.
373; Bukhari, ‘Nikah’, 97 and ‘Shahadat’, 30; Muslim, ‘Fada’il al-Sahabah’, 88; Ibn Majah,
‘Ahkam’, 20, etc. – Ed.)
15. ‘This day’, here, does not signify a particular day or specific date. It refers to that
period of time when these verses were revealed. In our own usage, too, expressions like ‘today’
or ‘this day’ often have the sense of the present time’. ‘This day the unbelievers have fully
despaired of your religion’ refers to the fact that the Muslims’ religion had developed into a
full-fledged system of life, reinforced by the authority and governmental power which it had
acquired. The unbelievers who had hitherto resisted its establishment now despaired of
destroying Islam and of forcing the believers back to their former state of Ignorance. The
believers therefore no longer needed to fear men: they should fear God alone instead. Indeed,
the Muslims were repeatedly asked to fear God, for they would not be treated lightly if they
failed to carry out His commands, especially as there was no longer any justifiable excuse for
such failure. If they still violated the law of God, there could be no basis for supposing that
they did so under constraint: it must mean that they simply had no intention of obeying Him.
16. The ‘perfection of religion’ mentioned in this verse refers to making it a self-sufficient
system of belief and conduct, and an order of social life providing its own answers to the
questions with which man is confronted. This system contains all necessary guidance for man,
either by expounding fundamental principles from which detailed directives can be deduced or by
spelling out such directives explicitly so that in no circumstances would one need to look for
guidance to any extraneous source.
The bounty referred to in the statement: ‘I have bestowed upon you My bounty in full measure’,
is the bounty of true guidance.
The statement: ‘I have been pleased to assign for you Islam as your religion’ means that, since
the Muslims had proved by their conduct and their striving that they were honest and sincere
about the commitment they had made to God in embracing Islam – the commitment to serve and obey
Him – He had accepted their sincerity and created conditions in which they were no longer yoked
in bondage to anyone but Him. Thus the Muslims were not prevented from living in submission to
God out of extraneous constraints just as there were no constraints preventing them from
subscribing to true beliefs. Having recounted these favours, God does not point out what should
be the proper response to those favours. But the implication is obvious: the only appropriate
response on the part of the believers must be unstinting observance of the law of God out of
gratitude to Him.
According to authentic traditions this verse was revealed in 10 A.H. on the occasion of the
Prophet’s Farewell Pilgrimage. The context however, seems to indicate that it was revealed soon
after the conclusion of the Treaty of Hudaybiyah (i.e. in 6 A.H.). All parts of the discourse in
which this verse occurs are so tightly interwoven and so closely inter-connected that it hardly
seems conceivable that it should have been inserted here several years later. My own estimate –
and true knowledge of this lies with God alone – is that this verse was originally revealed in
its present context (i.e. commenting upon the conditions prevailing at the time of the Treaty of
Hudaybiyah). It is conceivable that the true significance of the verse was not then fully
appreciated. But later on, when Islam prevailed over the whole of Arabia and the power of Islam
reached a high point, God once again revealed this sentence to His Messenger and ordered him to
proclaim it.
17. See Towards Understanding (Surah
Al-Baqarah, ayat 173) note 172.
