The Dietary Laws of God
Episode 1
Truthfully Considering Christian Abrogation of Mosaic Law and Freedom from the Dietary Limits Ordained by God per the Scripture of the People of the Book
Why Do Christians Eat Pork?
by
Yeremi Ben Royston Boulter
Derived from the draft by Jamila that was based on the thread:
at Ummah Islamic Forums 2002
Christian Diet
One of the many questions that arise on the Muslim message boards in which non-Muslims participate is the very relaxed attitude Christians have concerning what they eat. There seems no rhyme or reason to the standards they set for themselves, in what they eat, with the worship of our Lord.
Fasting
For example, when Christians fast, they often allow themselves bread and water. In other words, they may abstain from those foods with which, severally, they normally indulge themselves, and keep their bodies and souls together with plain, monotonous fare. Even if such a Christian abstains from all food during his or her fast, he or she will usually allow themselves water. I do not mean to diminish the sincere fasting of those Christian sects, like some Coptic Christians in Egypt, who will abstain from all animal products, including dairy products, fish and eggs, during the entire fasting period, and who, from sunrise to sunset they, like the Muslims, may abstain from eating or drinking anything at all. Others, however, just play lip-service to the official fasting periods, giving up a favourite item, such as chocolate, during them.
Lent
Another example is Lent, a forty-day Christian fasting period before the Friday preceding Easter. The Christian Easter coincides with the Jewish Passover, which celebrates the delivery of the Jewish people from God’s curse of death on the first born of the Pharaoh, his people and their livestock and the delivery of Israel out of Egypt a week later.
There is no equivalent celebration either in Christianity or in Islam, though Christians associate the sacrificial lamb that signifies Passover (the deliverance of God from ordained destruction) with the crucifixion. The day of Islamic sacrifice, is associated, rather, with the delivery of the sacrificial son Ismael from his father, Abraham’s hand, due to the latter’s faith.
It comes immediately after Al-Yaum Kabir (the Great Day), the day of Hajj, or Pilgrimage, the day of standing on the plain of Arafat, which is supposed to recall the Day of Resurrection. This is not like the Jewish version of Yom Kippur designed to rid the temple and the people of defilement through the sacrifice of a “scape-goat”.
However, it shows thanksgiving for the day that has just past, the day God forgave the millions of Muslims who completed the standing or completed the fasting of the day, if they were not making the Hajj that year. Like ablution, like fasting itself, like the prayer, and like paying zakat, offering a sacrifice with the pure intention to please God and submit to Him is a means of purification. Yet it is the piety enshrined in one’s heart that purifies the soul, not the sacrifice itself, that purifies. For after describing the sacrificial animal and the rites of sacrifice in Qur’an 22:32–36, God reveals,
“But their meat will not reach Allah, nor will their blood; what reaches Him is piety from you. Thus, have We subjected them to you that you may glorify Allah for that [to] which He has guided you; and give good tidings to the doers of good.”
[Qur’an 22:37]
Rather, fasting on the great day if one is not on the Hajj clears the Muslim’s sin for the year before and after, whilst the performance of Hajj itself wipes the Pilgrim’s slate clean.
Al Qatadah reported Umar Al-Khattab asked Messenger ﷺ of God, “what is the position of one who fasts” … “the day of ‘Arafa” (9th of Dhu’I-Hijja), whereupon he said: “It expiates the sins of the preceding year and the coming year.”
[Sahih Al-Muslim, Book 13, Hadith 252 and 253]
Per Judaic scripture, the Passover sacrifice led to the delivery of the Israelites out of Egypt by God, and the successful crossing of the Red Sea. The celebration of this event for the practising Jew — the last day of Passover holiday, the day before the thanksgiving evening meal — is by fasting. It used to coincide with Ashura, which is still celebrated by the Muslims, but per the unadjusted Lunar Calendar, which progresses around the Solar Year every thirty-three years or so, rather than per the adjusted Jewish Solar-Lunar Calendar that keeps it in line with the Solar Calendar that the Christians use.
Nowadays, in this secular global environment, the build up to Easter begins with a holiday, often associated with Rio de Janeiro, now commonly a spectacle of processions of spectacular floats, and of naked flesh and flashy costumes dancing in the street, called Carnaval. Carnaval is not the original Carnival — whose pure origin is a Roman feast day. Like its non-proper noun, carnival, nowadays it refers to a spectacular outdoor festival, a participatory street show. In other cities, such as New Orleans, this festival is called Mardi Gras. The Rio event is now broadcast all over the world so that even the people not participating can get a taste of the excitement and a view of gyrating half, sometimes almost fully, naked bodies.
Originally, however, Carnival referred liturgically to Shrove Tuesday, the holy day that people emptied their larders of all meat products, cooking them in a great feast that everyone shared in to bid farewell temporarily to meat because they would now fast (abstain from) it for forty days. If they left any meat in the larder, forty days would be enough time to see that it went off and became inedible. Hence the feast: to consume all of it and not waste any of it. In addition, the people would build effigies of saints and carry them on biers or litters through the streets in a procession whilst they themselves dressed in sackcloth to show they were entering a fasting period. These may be the origins of the huge floats now built on motorised vehicles in Rio and the costumes the dancers now wear.
Episode 2
Eroding Christian Fasting
by
Yeremi Ben Royston Boulter
Mardi Gras
Originally, Carnival referred liturgically to Shrove Tuesday, the holy day that people emptied their larders of all meat products, cooking them in a great feast that everyone shared in, bidding farewell to meat for forty days because they would now fast (abstain from) it. If they left any meat in the larder, forty days would be enough time to see that it went off and became inedible. Hence the feast: to consume all of it and not waste any of it. In addition, the people would build effigies of saints and carry them on biers or litters through the streets in a procession whilst they themselves dressed in sackcloth to show they were entering a fasting period. These may be the origins of the huge floats now built on motorised vehicles in Rio and the costumes the dancers now wear.
From this original holiday, we can surmise that the fast was principally the fasting of meat, which means, of course, that one may consume fish (the produce from fishing) or vegetables (the produce of tilling the earth). Even that ‘partial,’ but general, fast has become diluted so that now a Christian is free to choose what he will abstain from (if anything) during the Lent period, including non-edibles — such as using his or her car. ‘What are you giving up for Lent?’ is now a common question among practising Christians.
Friday
Among practising Roman Catholics, it is (was?) common to eat fish on Fridays, abstaining from the normal meat dish one eats on other days.
So why do they have these complicated and only partially adhered to rules of diet, if all dietary Law has been repealed by Jesus, Peace be upon him? I think it is because there were strict dietary laws which were gradually eroded as Christianity absorbed more and more customs from the varied tribes of people who took Christianity as their religion. Why? Because we can see the first stages of the rear-guard action to defend these dietary laws in Acts, where James, the brother of Jesus, sought to stem the erosion which Paul’s doctrine had already precipitated, saying:
Trouble not them which from the Gentiles are turned to God: But that we write unto them that they abstain from meats offered to idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.
[Acts 21:24–25 & Acts 15:20 and 28–29]
Fasting and Fornication
The seriousness of the dietary prohibition is such that it is compared with “fornication”. This offence does not seem all that serious now, since it is common practice all over the modem world for young men and women to experiment with sex before marriage, or ‘live together’ without getting married, or even go through a succession of sexual partners for pleasure without any commitments each to the other. Among believing Muslims, however, it is a very serious offence, so serious that it often carries with it an unofficial death sentence due to the shame the family feels in which fornication occurs.
This unofficial death sentence is a cultural phenomenon, perhaps born of the prohibition of sex without marriage. However, it is deeply flawed. The Islamic Divine Law (al-Sharia), which is derived from the Qur’an and official teachings of Prophet Muhammad, may God Praise him (ﷺ), does not allow a death sentence in these cases, and condemns such ‘honour killings’ as murder. In line with Divine Law, the offending parties of a fornication case, both the boy and girl, should be scourged and then exiled from the community of Muslims in which the event took place for one year, lest, in the hereafter, their punishment were to be roasted in an oven during the life of the grave (Barzakh).
Barzakh is the place between death and resurrection, and the consequences of sinning may last until the Day of Judgement should the sinner die on the sin without repentance. This life is similar in concept to Catholic Purgatory, though not liturgically congruent.
Some people have criticised the conditional statement about the life of the grave, above. The opinion is derived, which admittedly could be mistaken, from the following: Muslims know that lawful punishment expiates sins from what was reported by ‘Ubada bin As-Samit, who said that the Prophet ﷺ took a pledge his companions:
“Not to join anything in worship along with Allah, not to steal, not to commit illegal sexual intercourse, and not to kill…. Whoever amongst you fulfils his pledge, his reward will be with Allah, and whoever amongst you commits any of these and receives the legal punishment in this world then that punishment will be expiation for that sin.”
[Sahih Al-Bukhari, Book 2, Hadith 18]
From the same source, we also know how fornicators will be tortured in Barzakh from a dream of his that the Prophet ﷺ recounted.
Samura bin Jundub reported that the Messenger ﷺ of God said, “Last night two persons came to me and woke me up and said to me, ‘Proceed!’ … So, we proceeded and came across something like an oven.” … The Messenger ﷺ of God added, “We looked into it and found naked men and women, and behold, a flame of fire was reaching to them from underneath, and when it reached them, they cried loudly. I asked them, ‘Who are these?’ They said to me, ‘Proceed!’ … I said to them, ‘I have seen many wonders tonight. What does all that mean which I have seen?’ They replied, ‘We will inform you: As for … those naked men and women whom you saw in a construction resembling an oven, they are the adulterers and the adulteresses.’
[Sahih Al-Bukhari, Book 91, Hadith 61]
In Sahih Muslim, the Prophet ﷺ informed his companions after her funeral that a woman who had asked for Allah’s punishment for her adultery had repented so much that it was sufficient for the repentance of seventy men from Medina. Then he asked them,
“Do you know of any repentance better than that she sacrificed her life for Allah?”
[Sahih Muslim, Book 29, Hadith 36]
Surely such repentance alleviates punishment — between lives and in the Afterlife!
The Parameters of the Debate
Coming back to the subject in hand, the defence that Christians often erect to justify their non-observance of the Torah Laws, especially concerning what they eat, is three pronged, centring around, in the Gospels, Matthew Chapter 15 and Mark Chapter 7. They also cite Acts 10 from Luke’s scripture, and various passages from Galatians and Romans in which Paul argues the abrogation of Mosaic Law. These evidences I will, God willing, present and examine first. I will then discuss dietary law using Islamic proofs. Finally, I will present evidence that Jesus a came not to abrogate, but confirm, the Mosaic Law to the Jews, and examine the claim that Jesus, Peace be upon him, was to allow the people to distance themselves from that which had been added to it by the priesthood, and his mission was, as is written in the Qur’an:
to attest the Law which was before me, and to make lawful to you part of what was (before) forbidden to you
[Qur’an, 6:50]
and thus, that Christians are obliged, in line with their scriptures, and now due to the criterion which is the Qur’an, to follow the Monotheistic Laws of God that are enshrined in our scripture, which confirms what is in the Gospel and Torah.
Episode 3
The Epistles — Faith and Works in Christianity
by
Yeremi Ben Royston Boulter
The Abrogation of Mosaic Law in the New Testament
The Christians say that, according to St. Paul, the Mosaic laws of practice have been abrogated for Christians. There is no need to follow the coercion of external Law, embodied in the dictates of the scribes and priests of the Pharisees, imposed on men. Rather, men should follow their inner conscience resulting from following the spiritual Laws of practice God demands.
Ignorance is bliss.
Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake. For, the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof If any of them that believe not bid you to a feast, and you are disposed to go; whatsoever is set before you, eat, asking no question for conscience sake.
[1 Corinthians 10:25–27]
Indeed, this seems a clear license that anything offered up by anybody, believer or not, is permissible to eat. It even seems to indicate you need not speak God’s blessing over the food before eating it. But Paul then gives a proviso:
If any man says unto you, ‘this (food) is offered in sacrifice unto idols, ‘eat (it) not for his sake, nor your conscience sake.’
[1 Corinthians 10:28]
He also says,
If I, by Grace, be a partaker, why am I evil spoken of for that which I give thanks? Whether, therefore, you eat or drink, or whatsoever you do, do it all to the Glory of God.
[1 Corinthians 10:30–31]
So, even for Paul, there is a minimum standard, if you know. It is only if you do not know, and take care not to ask, that you have the liberty to partake of whatever is offered. Even so, one should give thanks for God’s Grace before consuming what is set before you. Thus, per the doctrine of Paul, ignorance, for the Christian, even deliberate ignorance, is bliss, and you will not be blamed for that.
Christians are free from the Law of Moses.
The principle behind embracing ignorance is that the Old Law, exteriorly imposed, is dead. The New Law, faith in Jesus Christ a, is what is living, and spiritually palpable.
Wherefore, my brethren, you also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that you should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the Law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the Law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
[Romans 7:4–6]
Paul even reasons with us, giving Abraham a as an example:
For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, (was) not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if they which are of the Law (were to be) heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect. Because the Law works wrath: for where no Law is, (there is) no transgression. Therefore (it is) of faith, that (it might be) by Grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the Law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all; before Him Whom he believed, even God, Who quickens the dead and calls those things which be not, as though they were.
[Romans 4:13–16]
Or are they? This vision of faith being the substitute of works is emphatically denied by James, the brother of Jesus:
My brothers, what is the gain if anyone says he has faith, but he does not have works? Is the faith able to save him?
[James 2:14]
faith, if it does not have works, is dead, being by itself …
[James 2:17]
out of the works the faith was made perfected. …
[James 2:22]
a man is justified out of works, and not out of faith only…
[James 2:24]
as the body is dead apart from the spirit, so also faith is dead apart from works …
[James 2: 26]
He, too, gives examples and a rationale:
But if a brother or a sister is naked and may be lacking in daily food, and any one of you say to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ but does not give them the things the body needs, what gain is it? So, also faith, if it does not have works, is dead being by itself
[James 2:16–17]
But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith out of my works. You believe that God is One. You do well; even the demons believe and shudder. But are you willing to know, O vain man, that faith, apart from works, is dead?
[James 2:18–20]
Was not our father, Abraham, justified by works, offering up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith worked with his works; and out of the works the faith was made perfected. And the Scripture was fulfilled, saying, ‘And Abraham believed God, and it was counted for righteousness to him’; and he was called, Friend of God. You see, then, that a man is justified out of works, and not out of faith only.
[James 2:21–24]
But in the same way Rahab, the harlot, was also justified out of works, having received the messengers, and sending them out by another way. For, as the body is dead apart from the spirit, so also faith is dead apart from works.
[James 2:25–26]
So, Paul is of the opinion that faith alone is sufficient for salvation, but James feels faith must be expressed through actions, without which faith is worthless.
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