-
Usage Of Geletan – More Details Required
ASA – There has been talk of Ghamidi Sb – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xt-X-sr8sU
Question Regarding Pork, Its By-products, and the Prohibition of Its Sale
Respected Ghamidi Sahib,
We have been studying your discussion of halal and haram in Meezan and in the “23 Questions” series, particularly your principle that when a prohibition occurs in a hadith, one should first determine whether it establishes an independent category of prohibition or is an application, explanation, or consequence of a more fundamental prohibition already established by the Qur’an.
In Part 42 of the 23 Questions – Halal and Forbidden discussion, you address this methodological issue in relation to interest, intoxicants, prohibited relationships, predatory animals, donkeys and other matters. The underlying principle appears to be that individual prohibitions should be understood through the fundamental Qur’anic categories and their underlying reasons rather than automatically being treated as entirely independent additions to the Qur’an.
This raises a specific question concerning the pig.
1. The wording of the Qur’an
At all four places where the dietary prohibition occurs, the Qur’an uses the expression:
لَحْمَ الْخِنزِيرِ / لَحْمَ خِنزِيرٍ — “the flesh/meat of swine.”
Surah al-An‘am 6:145 is particularly significant:
أَوْ لَحْمَ خِنزِيرٍ فَإِنَّهُ رِجْسٌ
“…or the flesh of swine, for indeed it is impure…”
Immediately afterwards, in 6:146, when the Qur’an speaks of the prohibition imposed upon the Jews, it explicitly uses a different word for fat:
حَرَّمْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ شُحُومَهُمَا
“…We prohibited to them their fats…”
This distinction appears linguistically significant. Classical Arabic distinguishes لحم (lahm), flesh/meat, from شحم (shahm), fat. Modern lexicographical summaries likewise define lahm primarily as the muscular/fleshy tissue covering the bones, although some fat may naturally be intermixed with it.
This linguistic distinction was also recognized in classical tafsir. Abu Hayyan states concerning لحم الخنزير:
“ظاهره أن المحرم منه هو لحمه فقط”
“The apparent meaning is that what is prohibited from it is its flesh alone.”
He then reports that Dawud al-Zahiri held:
“المحرم اللحم دون الشحم”
“What is prohibited is the flesh, not the fat.”
Abu Hayyan then records the majority position that the mention of flesh represents the entire animal because flesh constitutes its principal use.
Thus, restricting the literal meaning of lahm al-khinzir to flesh is not exclusively a modern interpretation; a related reading existed in the early Zahiri tradition.
There remains, however, another important question concerning:
فَإِنَّهُ رِجْسٌ — “for it is impure.”
Does the pronoun in فإنه refer specifically to lahm — the flesh — or to khinzir — the pig itself?
If it refers to the pig itself, the argument that the entire animal is rijs becomes considerably stronger. This appears to be one of the important textual foundations on which scholars such as Ibn Hazm extended the ruling beyond flesh.
2. The more difficult issue: the explicit prohibition of sale
The greater difficulty, however, seems to arise from the authentic hadith narrated by Jabir:
إِنَّ اللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ حَرَّمَ بَيْعَ الْخَمْرِ وَالْمَيْتَةِ وَالْخِنْزِيرِ وَالأَصْنَامِ
“Allah and His Messenger prohibited the sale of wine, carrion, pigs and idols.”
This is Sahih al-Bukhari 2236 and is also reported in Sahih Muslim.
The wording here is especially important.
The Prophet ﷺ does not say:
بيع لحم الخنزير — “the sale of pork.”
He says:
بيع الخنزير — “the sale of the pig.”
Therefore, even if one accepts that لحم الخنزير in the Qur’an primarily addresses eating its flesh, how should we understand this separate and apparently explicit Prophetic prohibition concerning the sale of the pig itself?
3. Could the prohibition of sale be an application rather than a new independent prohibition?
Applying the methodology explained in the 23 Questions series, one possible interpretation might be:
The Qur’an prohibits pork as food. In the Prophet’s society, the ordinary commercial purpose of pigs was presumably their consumption. Consequently, the Prophet ﷺ prohibited their trade because such trade facilitated an already prohibited activity.
On that interpretation:
prohibited consumption → prohibition of commerce serving that consumption
The hadith would therefore be an application of the original prohibition rather than a declaration that every part of the pig, for every imaginable purpose, is intrinsically prohibited.
This interpretation could potentially explain how non-food uses of pig skin, hair, bone or similar materials might remain outside the original dietary prohibition.
However, we are unsure whether this is actually your interpretation or merely an application we are making of your methodology.
More importantly, the hadith itself does not expressly say:
“Do not sell pigs for eating.”
It simply says:
حَرَّمَ بَيْعَ الْخِنْزِيرِ
Therefore, what textual or contextual evidence permits us to restrict this apparently general prohibition of sale to the commercial sale of pigs for food?
4. The fat-of-carrion portion of the same hadith
The remainder of the same narration makes the issue even more interesting.
The Companions asked about the fat of carrion, explaining that it had genuine non-food uses: it was used to grease ships and hides and to provide lighting.
The Prophet ﷺ replied:
لَا، هُوَ حَرَامٌ
and then referred to the Jews who melted prohibited fat, sold it, and consumed its price.
At first sight, this could be read as evidence that even useful non-food utilization is prohibited.
However, Imam al-Nawawi explains that “هو حرام” refers to its sale, rather than necessarily to benefiting from the fat itself. Thus classical scholarship itself recognized a distinction between:
حرمة البيع — prohibition of sale
and
حرمة الانتفاع — prohibition of benefiting from or using something.
This distinction seems very important.
It means that something may conceivably have a permissible use while its commercialization remains prohibited.
Classical jurisprudence contains other examples of the distinction between permitted utilization and prohibited sale. For example, discussions concerning tanned hides show jurists separately debating whether something may be used and whether it may subsequently be sold.
5. This produces an important practical question
Suppose we accept the following two propositions:
-
Pig skin, hair, bone, fat, etc. may have legitimate non-food uses.
-
The explicit hadith nevertheless prohibits بيع الخنزير, the sale of the pig.
Then how are these materials supposed to enter lawful commercial circulation?
If buying and selling the pig is prohibited, the practical scope for benefiting from its parts becomes extremely limited.
A person might theoretically obtain such material without purchasing it, possess it already, receive it without a sale, or perhaps benefit from a material after a legally relevant transformation. But none of those possibilities by itself establishes a general permission to conduct trade in pig products.
This therefore suggests that two different conclusions should perhaps be distinguished:
A. Non-food use:
The Qur’anic expression lahm al-khinzir may not by itself prove that every conceivable non-food use of every part of the animal is prohibited.B. Commercial trade:
The hadith حَرَّمَ بَيْعَ الْخِنْزِيرِ appears to provide an independent and explicit textual basis for prohibiting its sale.Consequently, while the permissibility of some non-food uses may be linguistically and historically arguable, the permissibility of trade appears substantially more difficult to establish.
6. Classical precedent
Our investigation also suggests that some elements of this reasoning have precedents in Islamic intellectual history.
Dawud al-Zahiri reportedly distinguished the flesh from the fat on the basis of the literal expression لحم الخنزير.
At the same time, the majority extended the prohibition to the entire animal, while Ibn Hazm, despite his strongly textualist methodology, also understood the Qur’anic wording more broadly.
Likewise, classical jurists sometimes distinguished between using a prohibited or impure material and selling it. Al-Nawawi’s explanation of the carrion-fat hadith is particularly important in this respect.
Therefore, the distinction between use and sale is not foreign to classical jurisprudence, even if the eventual rulings of the jurists differ.
Our specific question to you
Would the following accurately represent your position?
The Qur’an prohibits لحم الخنزير in the context of food. This does not necessarily establish that every part of the pig is intrinsically prohibited for every non-food purpose. The Prophet’s prohibition of بيع الخنزير should be understood as an application of the dietary prohibition to the commercial circumstances in which pigs were being traded, rather than as an independent prohibition of every possible commercial use of every derivative of the animal.
If that is your position, we would greatly appreciate clarification on two points:
First: What evidence establishes that the underlying ‘illah of حَرَّمَ بَيْعَ الْخِنْزِيرِ was its sale for prohibited consumption, when the words of the hadith themselves state the prohibition generally as the sale of the pig?
Second: If the Prophetic statement establishes that the sale of the pig itself is prohibited, even while some non-food benefits of its parts may remain permissible, would it not be more consistent to distinguish between:
permissibility of certain non-food uses
and
permissibility of commercial trade?
In other words, could one reasonably maintain that some non-food utilization of pig-derived material is not prohibited by the Qur’anic dietary command, while nevertheless accepting the explicit Prophetic prohibition against buying and selling the pig?
This distinction seems to us to reconcile the Qur’anic wording, the Arabic linguistic evidence, the classical disagreements, and the explicit hadith more easily than a general permission for the trade of pig fat, skin, or other parts.
We would be grateful to know how you understand this issue within your broader principle of ‘illah, application of Qur’anic prohibitions, and the legislative status of Prophetic explanations.
-
-
1 Reply
-
Usage Of Geletan – More Details Required
updated 12 hours, 7 minutes ago
2 Members
·
1
Reply
-
Please specify and summarise your question.
Sponsor Ask Ghamidi
