Website: www.aaiil.uk
Eid-ul-Fitr Khutba: Eating the lawful
and good things
Delivered at Lahore Ahmadiyya Centre, Wembley, London, 21 April 2023
by Dr Zahid Aziz
“And do not swallow up your property
among yourselves by false means, nor seek to gain access thereby to the
judges, so that you may swallow up a part of the property of (other) people
wrongfully while you know.” — The Quran, ch. 2, v. 189 |
وَ لَا
تَاۡکُلُوۡۤا
اَمۡوَالَکُمۡ
بَیۡنَکُمۡ
بِالۡبَاطِلِ
وَ
تُدۡلُوۡا
بِہَاۤ اِلَی
الۡحُکَّامِ
لِتَاۡکُلُوۡا
فَرِیۡقًا
مِّنۡ
اَمۡوَالِ
النَّاسِ
بِالۡاِثۡمِ
وَ اَنۡتُمۡ
تَعۡلَمُوۡنَ
﴿۱۸۸﴾٪ |
“O people, eat the lawful and good
things from what is in the earth, and do not follow the footsteps of the
devil. Surely he is an open enemy to you.” — 2:168 |
یٰۤاَیُّہَا
النَّاسُ
کُلُوۡا
مِمَّا فِی
الۡاَرۡضِ
حَلٰلًا طَیِّبًا
۫ۖ وَّ لَا
تَتَّبِعُوۡا
خُطُوٰتِ
الشَّیۡطٰنِ
ؕ اِنَّہٗ
لَکُمۡ
عَدُوٌّ مُّبِیۡنٌ
﴿۱۶۸﴾ |
The first verse which I recited is
the last verse in that section of chapter 2 of the Holy Quran which establishes
fasting in Ramadan as an obligatory institution in Islam. During the fast we
refrain from eating and drinking. This verse, using the same word for “eating”,
’akl, forbids unlawfully acquiring property, money or material
possessions by false means or taking what rightfully belong to others. During
the fast, a person gives up and avoids, for a period of time, the use of his
own food and drink, which belongs to him legally and morally, and which he has
every legal and moral right to consume. Thus he learns, or should learn, that
in real life he must refrain certainly from wrongfully taking anything
which belongs to someone else, and indeed, far from doing this, he should learn
to voluntarily give up some of what he possesses, and some of his rights, for
the benefit of others and of society in general.
The second verse contains a command
to eat, which is rather opposite to the command to fast. With Eid-ul-Fitr
we go back to eating and drinking without any restriction on the times when we
may do so. But does it mean that we no longer restrain ourselves from misdeeds
because that restraint was due to refraining from eating and drinking and now
we are allowed to eat and drink? In this second verse, its second part, “and do
not follow the footsteps of the devil”, conveys it clearly that, while eating
and drinking, we must still avoid every kind of misdeed and wrongdoing.
Usually in this verse people consider
“eating” as being literally eating food, and take this command to mean that we
should eat only the things allowed by Islam as foodstuff (called here as ḥalāl)
and that they should be clean and hygienic to eat (called here as ṭayyib).
The question arises: does the second part, “and do not follow the
footsteps of the devil”, mean that if you carry out the command to eat only
lawful and good things, you will thereby be avoiding “following the footsteps
of the devil”? Or, is the second part a separate and additional command? The
vast majority of Muslims do carry out the first command. More interestingly, there
is a huge number of non-Muslims in the world who also carry out this command
because they don’t eat anything which we Muslims regard as non-halal or forbidden.
Practising Jews don’t eat anything which a Muslim can call non-halal. Among
Hindus and Buddhists, there are large numbers of people who are vegetarians.
There are also an increasing number of non-religious people who are vegetarians
or vegans and take great care about the source of their food. Does this mean
that all these billions of people all over the world, Muslims and non-Muslims, are
avoiding following the footsteps of the devil because they are only eating
things which are allowed by Islam? If this were so, there would be hardly any
crime, injustice or oppression in the world.
This second command, i.e., not to
follow the footsteps of the devil, shows that the first command, to eat only lawful
and good things, is meant in two senses. One sense is the obvious physical and
literal sense. The other sense is that by eating “the lawful and good things”
is meant lawful and good behaviour. Only then can anyone resist the
devil. There are examples in the Quran where a bad deed is likened to eating
something harmful. It says:
“Those who swallow the property of the orphans
unjustly, they swallow only fire into their bellies” (4:10).
Those religious leaders who distort
the teachings of religion for their own interests are described as follows:
“Those who conceal anything of the Book that Allah has
revealed and take for it a small price, they eat nothing but fire into their
bellies” (2:174).
These religious leaders, in order to
maintain their own position of leadership over people, or to gain wealth from
people, misrepresent the teachings sent by God by concealing certain parts of those
teachings. Another example is where the Quran condemns backbiting as follows: “Does
one of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother?” (49:12).
It also says that those people who,
in this life, do not urge the feeding of the poor, in the next life they have
no food “except filth, which none but the wrongdoers eat” (69:36–37). Those
who are only interested in feeding themselves, and do nothing to ensure that
others can also eat, are actually eating filth, even they might be eating the
finest and most halal foods.
The word used in
this verse for “good” food is ṭayyib. Although it is applied
mostly to good things of various kinds in the Quran, it is also applied to good
humans. A part of a verse says: وَ
الطَّیِّبٰتُ
لِلطَّیِّبِیۡنَ
وَ الطَّیِّبُوۡنَ
لِلطَّیِّبٰتِ , meaning: “good
deeds are for good people, and good people are for good deeds” (24:26). The
word ṭayyib here is applied to good deeds and to good people. What
it indicates is that when a person starts doing good deeds with sincerity and
devotion, he or she becomes a manifestation of good deeds. These deeds become
part and parcel of his or her nature so that it appears to him that good deeds
have been created for him to do, and that he has been created to do good deeds.
The Quran also speaks of a ṭayyib life:
“Whoever does good, whether male or
female, and is a believer, We shall certainly make him live a good life (فَلَنُحۡیِیَنَّہٗ
حَیٰوۃً طَیِّبَۃً), and We
shall certainly give them their reward for the best of what they did.” (16:97).
Therefore, the verse which I am
discussing indicates that our behaviour and deeds should correspond to how we
should be eating. Just as we eat lawful things only, and from among these, the
things which are good for us, we should lead lives of lawful and good, ḥalāl
and ṭayyib, behaviour. That is how we will continue to resist the
devil and our eating will be as spiritually beneficial as refraining from
eating during Ramadan. I may make two further points in this regard. In case
of literally eating food that is ḥalāl, it is not only the
constituents of that food and its manner of preparation that go to make it
lawful. If a person has obtained money through dishonesty or any other false
means, the food which he buys with it is not for him ḥalāl,
even though it is ḥalāl for others. If government officials
from a Muslim country, who have illegally amassed vast wealth in bank accounts
in Europe, visit Europe, withdraw some of that money and then look for a shop
selling ḥalāl food, it would really be both a depressing and
a comical situation. The other point I wanted to make relates to applying the
command “eat the lawful and good things” to our behaviour, as I mentioned
earlier. “Lawful” in this situation means that in our behaviour we give to
others what we owe them, and do not avoid it or fall short. In all aspects of
life we should perform the duties to which we have committed ourselves through
some promise or contract. And “Good” in this situation means that we go beyond
this and do voluntary acts of goodness and benefit towards others.
Islam requires us to make efforts for
our moral and spiritual betterment even at the cost of what we regard as
physical suffering. The Quran gives examples of followers of some prophets
before the time of the Holy Prophet Muhammad whose interest in food was more
than their interest in spiritual development. One example is from the time of
Moses. After crossing the Red Sea, he and the Israelites found themselves in a wilderness
while waiting for the promise of conquering the promised land. Here they faced
a struggle, and only had what is called “manna” for food, which was said to
have been sent down to them from heaven. However, they complained about this after
a while. The Quran reminds them of this as follows:
“And when you said: Moses, we cannot endure one food,
so pray your Lord on our behalf to bring forth for us out of what the earth
grows, of its herbs and its cucumbers and its garlic and its lentils and its
onions. He said: Would you exchange what is better for what is worse?” (2:61)
According to the Bible, they said:
“If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost
nothing…” (Numbers, 11:4–5). What Moses meant was that it was better for them
to learn discipline and gain moral nourishment through the hardship they were
undergoing than to hanker after physical food. They thought they were better
off in Egypt as slaves of the Pharaoh because they got to eat what they wanted,
in return for their servitude. But God, and Moses, wanted them to be an
independent people even though it required suffering. We see this even today,
when many countries, for the sake of material aid from the wealthy countries of
the world, are prepared to give up their sovereignty. According to the Bible
account, Moses then prayed to God in this regard, and God promised to send them
Quails in abundance, blown from the sea by the wind and falling on them from
above. While doing this, God also punished them for their greed by sending a
plague. A Bible commentator writes about this: “The plague may have been a
disease carried by the quail as a lesson to His people that often what they
think they want is not good for them” (see link). This is
the result when the followers of any religion ask God to do what they want, in
pursuance of their low desires, rather than do what God wants them to do.
The other example the Quran provides
is from the time of Jesus. It is as follows:
“When the disciples said: Jesus, son of Mary, is your
Lord able to send down food to us from heaven? He said: Keep your duty to
Allah if you are believers. They said: We desire to eat of it, and that our
hearts should be satisfied, and that we may know that you have indeed spoken
truth to us, and that we may be witnesses of it” (5:112–113).
According to them, the proof of the
truth of religion is that it should satisfy their physical desires. The reply
given to them by Jesus, “Keep your duty to Allah if you are believers” means that
instead of praying to God to send food they should seek their spiritual betterment
through keeping their duty to God and acting on His commandments. It is
recorded in the Gospel of John that, after Jesus had performed the miracle of
feeding the five thousand from five barley loaves and two small fish, people
were pursuing him, and he said to them:
“you seek me, not because you saw the signs, but
because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not labour for the food which
perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life” (John, 6:26–27).
In the incident mentioned in the
Quran, it is related that Jesus did pray to God to send down food from heaven
for his followers, to serve as an everlasting sign (5:114). According to the
Quran, God replied to his prayer as follows:
“Surely I will send it down to you,
but whoever disbelieves (or is ungrateful) afterwards from among you, I will
punish him with a punishment with which I will not punish anyone among the
nations” (5:115).
What we
learn from this is that one must not ask God for material benefits, in
preference to, and instead of (and I stress, in preference to, and
instead of) praying to Him for guidance to the right path. We also learn
that when God bestows material benefits upon us we must express gratitude by
our words and by our deeds, otherwise we are liable to punishment from God in
the same measure and amount as the material blessings we received. According to
the Gospels Jesus in fact said: “My food is to do the will of Him Who sent me,
and to accomplish His work” (John, 4:34). Similarly, the Quran says that there
are people who pray “Our Lord, grant us (good) in the world”, but it says that they
ought to pray: “Our Lord, grant us good in this world and good in the
Hereafter, and save us from the punishment of the Fire” (2:200–201).
So let us
be thankful for the blessing of food and other physical necessities and
comforts that God has provided us with, and resolve to use them within the
proper limits, remembering our duty to provide the same to those people who are
deprived of them. And let us pray that after Ramadan we are thankful to Allah for
giving us the opportunity to reform ourselves, and to re-dedicate ourselves to
acquiring knowledge of His revelation, the Quran, which He sent for all mankind,
and which our elders in this Movement tried to propagate in the world. — Ameen.
Website: www.aaiil.uk