Home > Torah - Leviticus to Deuteronomy Stories in the Quran
God provides a detailed list of clean and unclean animals (pork, shellfish, camels, etc.) as a perpetual statute for Israel to maintain holiness (Leviticus 11:1–47).
Surah 6:146: "And to those who are Jews We prohibited every animal of uncloven hoof; and of the cattle and the sheep We prohibited to them their fat... We repaid them for their injustice."
Surah 2:173 &, 6:145: The Quran abolishes the distinction of "unclean" animals, permitting camels and rabbits, and retaining the prohibition only on carrion, blood, swine, and food dedicated to idols.
The Quran claims that all food was lawful to the Children of Israel except what "Israel (Jacob) forbade himself" before the Torah was revealed (Surah 3:93). This contradicts Leviticus, which states the prohibitions were Divine mandates given through Moses.
The Camel: Leviticus 11:4 explicitly forbids the camel ("because it chews the cud but does not have a divided hoof"). In Islam, camel meat is explicitly halal and was consumed by Muhammad (Sahih Bukhari 5403).
The Bible presents dietary laws as a pedagogical tool for holiness existing within the Mosaic Covenant. The Quran reinvents history by turning these laws into a divine spanking for bad behavior, ignoring the Levitical context of ritual purity. Furthermore, Muhammad permits camel meat (which he ate frequently, e.g., Sahih al-Bukhari 5405), directly contradicting the "eternal statutes" of the Levitical code he claimed to confirm.