Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet's Legacy

by Jonathan A.C. Brown

More importantly, there may be no reason at all for a ruling. This was especially the case in the rules revealed by God and His Messenger on matters of ritual. God had forbidden pork in the Qur’an, calling it ‘filth’ (rijs) (6:145). The Prophet had also instructed Muslims to wash out seven times any dish that a dog had drunk from. Did that mean dogs were ritually filthy too? Abu Hanifa and the majority of Muslim scholars used analogy to conclude that dogs were unclean. If one slobbered on your clothing, you could not pray in it. One scholar, Malik, disagreed. The Prophet allowed Muslims to use dogs in herding and to fetch game in hunting, Malik observed, so how could they be filthy? Malik concluded that the command to wash dishes drunk from by dogs was merely ‘done out of worship’ (ta‘abbudi), an arational act of obedience performed for the sake of God alone and unrelated to dogs’ ritual cleanliness or lack thereof.