Why is pig haram in Islam - a spiritual outlook
People question why we shouldn't eat certain things and they get answers from a chemistry or biology point of view. However, Islam came to make us realise another phenomenon and that is not that if you eat pig, it has more nitrates than the normal meat, so it is therefore haram. Or that pig is a dirty animal and we cannot eat it.
These may be true, and can have some certain aspects of wisdom behind them, but this is not why Islam has prohibited us from them.
Some mystics are on the agreement that "You are what you eat". For example, we can embody more of the spiritual realities of certain foods that we eat. Indeed, in Islam it is better to control what we eat i.e. having less meat or going one day with meat and another day without, for certain purposes.
Say we eat pig meat. The mystics have informed us that eating pig will make us in essence "pig-like" by nature. Another way of putting this, is that Islam forbids predators for the reason that you will become "predator-like" our potential (spiritually) will turn into a "wolf-like or lion-like" phenotype.
People will now say, why is it that we eat cow and sheep's meat? These animals are benign and they have no predator qualities unless you over eat them. Unless you over-eat these types of meats, for example eating too much cow meat will make you "cow-like". What does it mean to be "cow-like"? It means being lazy, getting up very late, and there is no discipline within - much like the behaviour of a cow.
That is the wisdom behind such issues of Allah (swt) stopping us from eating these things. Basically, any animal that has violent instincts and other sort of instincts which dehumanise us, it is considered haram.
These may be true, and can have some certain aspects of wisdom behind them, but this is not why Islam has prohibited us from them.
Some mystics are on the agreement that "You are what you eat". For example, we can embody more of the spiritual realities of certain foods that we eat. Indeed, in Islam it is better to control what we eat i.e. having less meat or going one day with meat and another day without, for certain purposes.
Say we eat pig meat. The mystics have informed us that eating pig will make us in essence "pig-like" by nature. Another way of putting this, is that Islam forbids predators for the reason that you will become "predator-like" our potential (spiritually) will turn into a "wolf-like or lion-like" phenotype.
People will now say, why is it that we eat cow and sheep's meat? These animals are benign and they have no predator qualities unless you over eat them. Unless you over-eat these types of meats, for example eating too much cow meat will make you "cow-like". What does it mean to be "cow-like"? It means being lazy, getting up very late, and there is no discipline within - much like the behaviour of a cow.
That is the wisdom behind such issues of Allah (swt) stopping us from eating these things. Basically, any animal that has violent instincts and other sort of instincts which dehumanise us, it is considered haram.