The difference between eating and drinking is rarely discussed, but anyone who knows the physiology of ruminants should know that there is a significant difference between the two.

Drinking is easier. There is nothing to chew, so there is less work to be done. The energy equation is more favourable for drinking than eating because nothing has to be chewed. Drinking could be considered a bigger blessing in some ways.

It is especially important for infants, as they do not have teeth and are using most of their energy for growth. The energy saved by drinking rather than chewing food helps development go ahead.

 

Dear Readers,

 

Please fin below a guest post by Abdullah Reed. We love this guest series by Abdullah Reed and we thank him for his unique contribution.

 

Dairy

 

The Great Lesson

 

Introduction

 

Peace be upon you and God’s blessings and his mercy. For the community of believers, consumption is not just a thrill. It is a critical way of sustaining our lives, and it is also worship. Eating and drinking are an essential part of survival.

Let’s remember, too, that when we are infants, we can only drink, not eat. 

Drinking is a very natural act, then. Many people take it for granted, but we should be grateful to Allah, and not take it for granted.

The difference between eating and drinking is rarely discussed, but anyone who knows the physiology of ruminants should know that there is a significant difference between the two.

Drinking is easier. There is nothing to chew, so there is less work to be done. The energy equation is more favourable for drinking than eating because nothing has to be chewed. Drinking could be considered a bigger blessing in some ways.

It is especially important for infants, as they do not have teeth and are using most of their energy for growth. The energy saved by drinking rather than chewing food helps development go ahead.

To assist a drink to go down and to be absorbed, it should be easy to drink, and milk is easy to drink. Alhamdulillah. God has produced a very fine drink for us in milk, and to permit us the milk of our livestock is a huge blessing that must not be neglected. Indeed, it must be appreciated and taken advantage of.

Yet, apart from our consumption of milk, and our appreciation of it, there is another aspect to milk that will be the focus of this essay. It is taking milk as a lesson.

In Surah An-Nahl of the Qur’an, Allah has told us this:

And indeed, for you in grazing livestock is a lesson. We give you drink from what is in their bellies – between excretion and blood – pure milk, palatable to drinkers.

 

Tafsir Al Muyassar says:

 

لكم -أيها الناس- في الأنعام -وهي الإبل والبقر والغنم- لَعظة، فقد شاهدتم أننا نسقيكم من ضروعها لبنًا خارجًا من بين فَرْث -وهو ما في الكَرِش- وبين دم خالصًا من كل الشوائب، لذيذًا لا يَغَصُّ به مَن شَرِبَه.

This tafsir says:

People, there is a sermon for you in livestock. That is, in camels, cattle, and sheep and goats. You have indeed witnessed that we give you a drink from their udders (ضروعها), milk, which emerges in a pure state from between intestinal slurry and blood, free from all impurities (شواءب). It is tasty (لذيذًا) and will not choke (لا يغصّ) the one drinking it.

 

Food manufacture and modification is a major topic, and a critically important one for us. We can take a lesson from milk. Rather, we have to take a lesson from milk. It is a fantastic product, and all praise be to Allah. If we do not take this lesson, we will not be educated. The believing community is under the lordship of Allah The Almighty, and that means that we must be willing to take our learning from Him, not from other sources that may challenge his teachings or devalue them.

This is a big lesson, then. I have named it  The Great Lesson in the title of the essay.

 

Mankind is a Food Manufacturer

 

Mankind is often found at or near the head of the food manufacturing line. Proofs for this are:

human beings are God’s caliphate (Qur’an 2:30), entrusted with the role and its burdens; we are shepherds and farmers, hunters, fishermen, cooks, bakers, waiters, and servers to one another;

as such, we are permitted to engage in food processing, such as peeling, cooking, combining, and flavouring food.

 

The Big Lesson from Livestock is

Purity

Mankind is tested by the privileges and duties of being a food manufacturer. We do not usually produce pure food, even when we can, but livestock do.

They spend a lot of time producing milk, and it is pure. Many livestock lactate for 10 months a year. Some cows produce more than a ton of milk, and it is pure. Alhamdulillah.

The first drink you had was also milk. Alhamdulillah.

Milk was all you had. Your mother produced it by God’s inspiration, not her own. Alhamdulillah. Now, your Lord is offering you some knowledge of what He did.

Livestock have non-sexual mammary glands. They do not function the same as human ones. They are more focused on production than romance.

The Almighty revealed:

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In The Name of God, The Most Merciful, The Most Compassionate

And verily! In the cattle, there is a lesson for you. We give you to drink of that which is in their bellies, from between excretions and blood, pure milk; palatable to the drinkers.

And from the fruits of date-palms and grapes, you derive intoxicating drinks and good provision. Verily, therein is indeed a sign for people who have wisdom.

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This is from the Qur’an, from surah An Nahl. There are two verses quoted above, verses 66 and 67. Please take your time. Please try to understand this lesson. God Almighty called it a lesson, not me.

Allah says it is a sign for those who have wisdom. It says so there at the end of verse 67. Please be wise, then. Study the lesson until you get it, in shaa Allah.

The Lord is your Lord, and the Lord of all people. He is teaching us and training us.

This ibarah, or practical lesson, must have an impact on us if we are his servants. There is a practical lesson in livestock for us, He says. The practical lesson is in how to either prepare a very good drink or prepare a bad one.

Both the above verses refer to drinks, even though drinks are not mentioned very often in the Qur’an. Thus it is clear that the two verses are part of a single teaching.

One verse is about what Allah manufactures and one is about what we manufacture, or rather what we extract. I believe that the message calls us to compare our manufacturing with His.

He also mentions that milk is given, while our date and grape products are extracted. The difference between given and extracted is that something that is given is prepared for us and we don’t have to prepare it.

When it is prepared for us by Allah, we can learn about how Allah’s manufacturing. So just look at his work! Its so good. Its so good that cows can grow 50 kg of body flesh from it in 3 months!

That means that the way that we should consider manufacturing is to learn from Allah.

Manufacturing procedures should not begin with chemistry or nutrition, because they are worldly sciences.

Allah has mentioned his product as palatable and pure (An Nahl verse 66).

It goes as far as delivery as well. He said palatable to the drinkers, not the eaters.

Drinks are easier to digest than foods. Food economics theories should be good enough to acknowledge this, but they do not. Food science currently considers the calories in milk and cheese equal. In reality, it is easier to obtain energy from drinks than foods. It is also easier to consume what is palatable than what is not, so milk and yoghurt cannot be compared as equals either. Milk is more palatable.

If something is given rather than extracted, that fact implies a number of things, actually. 

So what I believe is that it is ok to use chemistry, but chemistry is not to be taken as our primary method of analysis.

For nutrition, the same rule as well. Do not let caloric content or protein be taken as the first claim of any food. It may be nutritious but impure, whereas Allah’s manufacture is nutritious and pure.

Babies cannot consume impurities like adults. Many sick people cannot consume impure foods. Pure foods are a necessity for them, and are a pleasure to consume.

This purity opens up our hearts and enables us to appreciate our food. Consuming food free of impurities increases our confidence in what we’re eating. This confidence animates the digestive glands, improving our salivation, masticationcm, and secretion of gastric juices. Alhamdulillah.

We have to realise that milk is a gift from God. Its not a gift from the devil or from a person. Its a gift from God. God is glorified by what He does, and so milk producers and milk consumers will easily please God if they acknowledge Him rightly.

Look at the purity of milk. It is an expression of the creative power of our Lord, his kindness toward us, and his generosity.

This lesson calls us to consider the benefit and the harm of what we produce. A lot of foods that we manufacture contain impurities. 

What is purity, and how can you attain it in your cooking and

manufacturing?

Purity is the ratio of good and bad content in a production. Purity is an essential attribute of quality.

Livestock generally don’t fail in milk production because they generally don’t eat impure food or deviate in their lifestyle from what is right.

We don’t see them looking for gutter sludge or junk food at sports games. They almost always eat good things, like hay and grass. Alhamdulillah.

They can survive in nature, yet they mostly live domesticated. So we see find them in two conditions: wild and kept.

When we are their keepers, if we cause them to live a deviated life, they can revert to their wild status, with domesticated herds dying off from disease while wild animals remain alive.

That is how they can retain their true nature if mankind tries to push them away from it. If, however, we shepherd them well, they will flourish and we will produce breeds that are not in conflict with their genetics.

With good shepherding, their milk remains a gift from God, not an extract that we have to squeeze out by way of conflict.

Milk is taken with our pleasure and theirs

Milk flows by way of an active process that the animals control hormonally. Milk let down is the name of the process whereby a ruminant animal allows milk to proceed from the upper part of its udder to the lower, where it fills the teats and may be taken.

During milking, milk let down occurs continuously. A goat can deliver a litre of milk because of this. If a milking was only the removal of the content of the chambers in the udder, a single milking would only yield 100 milliliters of milk.

Milk let down, a process of flow, has been linked by The Creator  with the animal’s happiness and is restricted by stress. The hormone that switches on milk let down is called oxytocin, and it also makes the animal feel good.

The same hormone is active during orher pleasurable activities, and in particular during mating.

How great is God that He has made it to be a pleasure for them!

So we will not get much milk if we don’t shepherd the animals in a harmonious way, and many farmers know this.

 

Taking Milk Brings Harmony with Nature

Would God give us a gift that flows daily while animals are suffering in order to progide for us? That would not be godly.

This harmony is important. To manufacture something with harmony is to manufacture something that does good to the environment but not harm. That is godly. God does good but He does not do harm.

This brings the essay to an islamic principle of valuation, which I may call benefit analysis.

Benefit analysis

The primacy of benefit analysis ahead of chemical analysis is known by considering the presentation of livestock in the surah. The surah tells us there are many benefits in them for us (Qur’an 16:5-6). Some things do not have many benefits, by the way. Some have none. So, having many benefits is a significant factor that we should take note of.

The claim that benefit analysis should enter into our thinking is also confirmed by the presence of milk in Paradise and its heavenly abundance there. If milk was not a really good product it would not be flowing abundantly in Paradise.

In this surah we are guided to take multiple benefits from livestock, and in surah Hajj it is confirmed (Qur’an 22:33).

Chemical analysis may help us with this, and nutritional science too, but these are not the main tools. Religious science is the best tool, because it is through religious science that we can analyse the benefits of foods fully.

The benefits of our livestock are not the same from one scenario to the next.

Each situation is different. It depends on the geography, the climate, the species of the animals, the economic position of their owners, and so on.

Thus, judging the benefits is not a simple matter of measuring the protein content of their meat and comparing it to the protein in other crops.

For the islamic community to approach food science or food security in that way would be disastrous.

 

The Palatability Lesson

 

A further part of the teaching is that Allah has made livestock produce something palatable.

Similarly, He also commanded us to eat fruit when it ripens (Qur’an 6:141). It is known that as fruit ripens, it produces colours, aromas, flavours, textures, and glutamates that give us pleasure.

Likewise, He has created both milk and the creatures that consume it. Calves and lambs consume it, and we do too. Praise be to God.

 

Divine Inspiration and Special

Equipment

The description of milk in verse 66 of An Nahl indicates to us the production line. Milk is produced from between blood and the stinking food wastes of the intestines. This is also known by observation.

It tells us that the animals are divinely enabled to do something that is unusual: bring a pure substance out from among foul fluids.

How can it be?

The whole organism is geared to do it. Milk is produced as part of a very engaging life process whereby an animal’s thoughts, their heartbeat, their sweat, their flesh, and their bones can all be implicated in milk production. Their mindset, their eating patterns, and even their social patterns may follow the demands of lactation, and frequently do so.

We’re told openly that there is definitely (inna) a practical lesson for us (lakum) in livestock. The Arabic word “inna” means definitely. The lesson is definitely there – it is up to us to pay attention and get it.

So, don’t miss this. Try to get it.

We must not ignore this lesson. I believe that this is the key lesson on food manufacturing in our religion.

So what is the practical lesson? It includes 

 

the willingness of livestock to do God’s work;

their special suitability for their task;

the level of quality that results, and the respect that goes along with it.

 

They do not produce bad milk. Praise be to God and Glory be to Him!

Willingness carries acceptance, commitment, preparation, the work itself, being pleased with it, and patience upon it. Animals don’t have to focus their time and their thoughts on a task like we do, though. They are usually set up by instinct to remain focused on their natural ways; they are not so free-thinking.

Suitability is clear from their being equipped with special glands. The bees are suitably equipped too, but for honey, not milk. Many species of animal have special glands for special tasks, but not all produce good food that we can utilise.

 

Livestock do not Produce Alcoholic Drinks Like Humans Do

Our own manufacturing, in contrast to the work of cows and ewes, yields many sickening drinks (verse 67 of an Nahl mentions it).

This is a sign for us. It is a sign for those who have wisdom.

In manufacturing food we must be dedicated, facilitated, focused, and concerned with both the purity and taste of our products.

We must be willing and able to produce food that brings benefit without harm. We have to train ourselves to do so, God willing.

 

A Message for Parents and Food Sellers

Today, most parents and food manufacturers do not know the manufacturing lesson that milk gives us. Many parents are not actually committed to providing their children with pure foods. Sellers are even worse. There is a proliferation of sellers selling bad food, so lets try to do what is right.

Now, are you sure that your cooking is any better than the work of a creature that cannot speak and is simple, unable to use a blender or a toaster?

The time has come to judge the purity of your food, and to serve your children and mankind with pure food.

I’m hopeful that we will see improvement in the islamic community, and so I’m reminding you of this message, and asking you to do your best.

Manufacturing is not just for profit, or to win stars on Google maps. A lot of bad food scores well on Google maps. We cannot take the consumers’ ratings for guidance. Most of mankind are misguided, so don’t let them lead you as if they were your teachers.

Rather, if you want to please Allah, and increase the reward of your cooking and any work you may do in the food industry, then the motivation has come to judge the purity of your food, and to serve your children and mankind with pure food.

Take the lesson. Try to let go of the lovely taste of milk for a moment, and take the lesson:

In The Name of God, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful

And indeed, for you in grazing livestock is a lesson. We give you drink from what is in their bellies – between excretion and blood – pure milk, palatable to drinkers.

An-Nahl, verse 66

 

These creatures are set in the same space as us. They don’t live in the sea or on the moon. They are here on the earth. They walk around in the sun and eat grass. Maa shaa Allah, how great they are! We have a lot to be thankful for.

And yet, our own mothers all do the work, too. Human beings, neither eating grass, nor fermenting it. They produce milk! Half of mankind!

Maa shaa Allah! What great blessings Allah has put in our own design. Allah has said however, that the lesson is in livestock, and so I will leave it there.

Glory be to Allah, The Wise Creator. Glory be to Him, and Most Exalted is He, far from what they ascribe. Subhaanahu wa ta’ala ‘amma yushrikuun.