In the name of allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful What is sin in Islam?

Fifthly, even if the waw is taken as the waw of circumstance, there is no need to interpret fisq (abomination) with reference to a far-off verse, i.e. verse ig6 of The Cattle. After all, what prevents us from taking the word in its literal meaning of disobedience and rebellion? The word taken literally, the verse would mean: "Do not eat of the animal over which Allah's name has nest been taken -in case of the animal's being fisq" (i.e. in case the avoidance of taking Allah's name is deliberate,-for the word fisq applies to deliberate defiance of orders and not to omission through forgetfulness). This interpretation is preferable to the Shafi'ite interpretation for two reasons. One, it is consistent with all the verses and traditions relevant to the issue. Two, it saves a complete sentence of the verse -"And eat not of that over which Allah's name has not been mentioned" -from becoming meaningless.

Another argument which the Shafi'ites advance is as follows. A group of people called on the Prophet and inquired whether they could have any of the meat brought them from outside by certain neophyte Muslims, it being unknown whether Allah's name had been mentioned over the animal. The Prophet replied: "You may yourselves take Allah's name over it and eat it." On the basis of this tradition the Shafi'ites claim that taking Allah's name is not ‘ essential, for had it been so, the Prophet would not have permitted the eating of the meat over which Allah's name is uncertain to have been taken. But the tradition actually runs contrary to their thesis. It proves that the obligatoriness of taking Allah's name was a widely-known matter, that being the reason why those people came along inquiring about the meat brought them by the newly-converted country people (Muslims). Had the practice been different, the question of the lawfulness of that meat would not have arisen at all. The reply that the Prophet gave them is also significant. Had taking Allah's name been immaterial, the Prophet would have clarified that it was not essential to the lawfulness of the slaughtered animal's' flesh, which therefore, they could eat whether or not Allah's name had been taken over it. Rut what the Prophet actually told them was that they could eat the flesh after taking Allah's name over it. The logical meaning of this which a little deliberation would yield is that the animal slaughtered by a Muslim should as a rule be deemed to have been slaughtered properly and may be eaten of with an easy mind, and that any lingering doubt may be removed by the eater himself by mentioning Allah's name over the meat. Obviously, one cannot go about investigating, nor does the Shariah obligate him to investigate, whether the animal whose flesh is being sold at city and village shops was a clean animal, whether the slaughterer is a Muslim or not, whether he is a neophyte Muslim or an old one, and whether he has slaughtered it properly or not. On the face of it, everything done by a Muslim should be taken as correct, except where proof to the contrary exists. Unfounded doubts should not be made a ground for abstinence; they should rather be eliminated by saying Bismillah or Astaghfirullah. This is the lesson we learn from that tradition. In no way does the' tradition prove the unobligatoriness of taking Allah's name.

Still another Shafi'ite argument, no less fragile than the previous ones, is based on a mursal tradition which Abu Dawud has included in his book Al-Maraseel.

The tradition has the Prophet saying:

The animal slaughtered by a Muslim is lawful whether or not the Muslim has taken Allah's name over it, for if he were to take some name, it would be the name of Allah.
In the first place, this is a mursal tradition transmitted by a little-known Follower and so cannot render that unobligatory which has been proved to be obligatory by successive marfu traditions. Even if the tradition were absolutely sound, would it really imply that taking Allah's name is unobligatory ?

At best it could be said that if a Muslim chances to have slaughtered an animal without taking Allah's name, his omission should be attributed to inadvertence rather than to positive intention, and that the animal may be eaten of on the presumption that had the man taken some name it would have been the name of Allah and not of other-than- Allah. The tradition cannot be taken to mean that it is lawful to eat of the animal slaughtered by those who do not at all believe in taking Allah's name over the animal -who in fact hold a contrary view, and that taking Allah's name over the animal is not essential at all. Stretch and strain it as one may, the tradition will admit of no such interpretation.

This is what the Shafi'ite arguments for the unobligatoriness of taking Allah's name come to. One pledged to blind imitation might think them irrefutable. But I do not think that a man who reviews them critically would fail to realize how weightless they are in comparison with the arguments for the obligatoriness of taking Allah's name.

In brief, the conditions that the Quran and the sound traditions state for the meat to be clean are as follows:

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  It should not be the meat of the animals that have been declared to be unclean in themselves by Allah and His Prophet.
  
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  The animal must have been slaughtered in the manner prescribed by the Shariah.
  
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  Allah's name must have been taken over the slaughtered animal. The meat which does not fulfill these conditions is excluded from the tappibat (the good things) and is included in the khaba'ith (the foul things), Muslims being forbidden the use of it.