Impurity: Religious Belief or Insult to Non-Muslims?

Clean and dirty or pure and impure? Critics say impurity is an ideological and moral burden that religion places on the issue of cleanliness or contamination. In Islam, many believers are considered impure simply because they do not have a 'heavenly book'; women during menstruation are deemed 'impure.' Dogs are impure. Blood is impure. Why? To what extent does the duality of impurity and purity exacerbate issues like obsession? This week's discussion on Taboo revolves around these questions, featuring Dr. Taghi Kimiayi Asadi, a neurologist, and Sajjad Nikayin, a religious scholar, as this week's guests. Mr. Nikayin, let's start with an explanation of what impurity actually means. Sajjad Nikayin: The term 'impure' refers to all things that are not considered pure and clean according to religious law. Therefore, Muslims must observe specific rulings regarding them, such as the prohibition of consuming impure things. The concept of impurity is generally better defined in opposition to its counterpart, 'pure,' rather than in relation to contaminated or dirty. The term 'impure' is used both for the ten specific impurities that are inherently impure and for something that has become impure due to contact with an impurity. This means we have an impure entity in jurisprudence and a contaminated one. The impure is that which is inherently impure, while the contaminated is something that is originally pure but becomes impure due to contact with impurities. Blood is inherently impure, and I apologize, urine is inherently impure. Wine is inherently impure. In jurisprudence, we have the well-known ten impurities. Semen is among the ten impurities. But suppose a wet hand comes into contact with a dog; again, because the dog and also the pig are inherently impure, the wet hand has become impure. Dr. Kimiayi, I want to ask you what science says about this and what it means for something to be impure? Taghi Kimiayi Asadi: In fact, the idea of impurity and purity is one that was established before science and has no connection to science. Consider that placing blood and feces in the same category is completely unrelated, and they cannot be grouped together. Blood, from a medical and bacteriological perspective, is completely clean and sterile in a healthy human, while feces are full of various bacteria. Grouping these two together shows that whoever invented this idea had no knowledge of realities, and the other seven or eight examples mentioned are not acceptable from the perspective of modern science and hygiene or from the bacteriology theory proposed by Pasteur. We can completely refute all of them one by one as to why we think, for example, urine is more sterile than human saliva, while urine is completely sterile and, from a medical standpoint, in a healthy person without a urinary infection, there is no impurity or disgusting thing in it. Mr. Nikayin, returning to you, you heard Dr. Kimiayi's remarks. He speaks of scientific reasons and that the concept of impurity is pre-scientific and not accepted by science. Now, all these examples you mentioned, why are they considered impure? Does religion provide any reasons for declaring these ten impurities, which, of course, go beyond this? Nikayin: His ultimate analysis is a reductionist one. Reducing everything to a collection of cells and proteins and... When we talk about the impurity of blood, we are not talking about blood flowing in the human body. We are talking about the impurity of blood that has exited the body and has now accumulated on the hand. Well, it is evident that even medicine does not consider this blood to be clean; otherwise, suppose when someone falls and suffers from bleeding, why do you clean their blood? Because they could get infected. The discussion is about the impurity of that blood. Feces are the same. Well, why do we clean feces? Suppose we are not religious. As far as I know, Mr. Kimiayi and other biologists consider humans to be the result of evolution; well, humans have cells that are the same as those of animals, and there is no difference. Why should this human be endowed with inherent dignity and human rights and so on? To say that blood is a collection of cells, then we must explain why today doctors clean the site of bleeding and all these things. Modern humanity has a collective agreement regarding many of these impurities. But you said that the discussion of impurity is different from contamination. Nikayin: No. I said it is different. Yes, I understand. But I am critiquing Mr. Kimiayi's argument that if we want to consider all these as a collection of cells and bacteria, the answer ultimately is that it is not limited to contamination. That is, some contaminations are considered impure from a religious perspective, and the impurity of something does not necessarily mean that it is contaminated. For various reasons. Many of these reasons we know, and many we do not. Now, for example, consider a dog that has received all its vaccinations and has bathed seven times a day, yet it is still considered impure. We do not necessarily know the reason for it, but the religious people have trusted their scripture. Mr. Kimiayi, returning to you, Mr. Nikayin says that religion has declared many things impure, and they may not necessarily be contaminated. One example is certain animals, such as dogs or pigs. Can science provide any explanation for how a living being like a dog is considered impure? We see that dogs are collected and their presence in the streets is prohibited, and this happens with the same ideology. How can it be explained scientifically that dogs are impure? Kimiayi Asadi: Look, generally, the issue of impurity, as he said, is not a scientific issue. We cannot say that dogs or pigs or wine are impure. It is a different paradigm of thought within the religious paradigm, and this idea of impurity does not exist in health science. These are more ideas in religion that do not have any conclusive evidence for why, for example, dogs or pigs are considered impure. Not only dogs and pigs but also non-Muslims are considered impure, and you cannot touch them. This is not only in Islam; you can see it in most religions, and these are interpretations that, in the modern century, when human perception of nature has changed, should be reconsidered. And this dignity that you mentioned is really an unwarranted pride that we are giving ourselves. In fact, from the perspective of dignity, I do not think humans are much more advanced than dogs... Nikayin: Well, then human rights are pointless. The basis of human rights is human dignity... Kimiayi Asadi: You must also consider animal rights... Nikayin: The fact that we are all results of evolution, well, with this approach, in a sense, it undermines the foundation of human rights based on human dignity. Kimiayi Asadi: Look, if the front part of the human forehead has advanced and we have reached this position, it does not mean that we are pure and that dogs and lions and... Nikayin: No, I did not say we are pure. Kimiayi Asadi: I know only Shia Muslims are pure. None of the other humans are pure, and if you touch a wet hand to a Jewish person, you must wash yourself seven times. Nikayin: Well, of course, it is not like that. You are more aware. Kimiayi Asadi: These interpretations are what undermine human dignity. Nikayin: No, I shake hands with Christians, I shake hands with Jews... Kimiayi Asadi: You have to because you live in America, and if you don’t, you will lose your job. Nikayin: No, it has nothing to do with that. The jurists in Iraq, like Mr. Sistani, consider the sweat of Christians and Jews to be pure, and it has nothing to do with you, sir. Regarding the impurity of non-Muslims who do not have a divine book, yes, it must be said that Muslims consider this group to be impure; we must discuss how selfish this view is and how altruistic. But Mr. Doctor, I want you to finish your remarks about dogs. Now, even if we want to look at it from the perspective of religions, why should a creature or creation be impure? Or even a pig? The pig is a food source for a large portion of the world's population. Is it not selfish to consider the food of a large part of the world's population to be impure? Kimiayi Asadi: There is no scientific explanation that pigs, dogs, or cats or leopards are impure. The idea of impurity does not exist at all. Many dogs are kept in a way that is much healthier than humans. They carry no viruses or bacteria and may even be superior in terms of affection and dignity than some humans. This impurity is not an issue that exists in nature. This issue that I mentioned regarding Jews must be explained; I grew up in a religious family. Our neighbors were Jewish, and I could see how the people in the neighborhood treated them. Regarding pigs, there is a myth that some people became infidels and fought with the Jews, and God cursed them and turned them into pigs, and for this reason, eating pork was forbidden in the Jewish religion and then carried over to Islam. That is, if you think that [pigs] transmit diseases, then sheep and goats do too. Cows also transmit tuberculosis, and sheep can transmit brucellosis. That is, all of them. Now, if you want to look at it from a health perspective, humans transmit diseases to each other more than anyone else. The issue of impurity is in the religious paradigm, not nature. Mr. Nikayin, I return to you; if you want to provide an explanation regarding this part of Dr. Kimiayi's remarks, but my question to you is whether human dignity applies to a person who is non-religious, a person who is godless, a person who is religious but whose religion is not considered valid by Islam or does not have a heavenly book? Nikayin: Exactly, your claim was that ultimately we are the result of evolution, and there is no difference. We are all just a bunch of proteins and amino acids, and there is no difference, and we and the lion of the jungle and the pack animal all ultimately come from the same place. With this reasoning, the founders of human rights have said that humans have inherent dignity, and therefore we establish these human rights. Dr. Kimiayi also says that many dogs have more dignity than humans. I also accept this. So let us allow a dog to run for president in the United States or anywhere in the world. If you attribute dignity inherently to dogs as much as you do to humans, let it also run for president and for the Senate. Regarding the Jews, I now have the fatwas of two people in front of me with whom I have no intellectual agreement, Ayatollah Khomeini and the current leader of the Islamic Republic. These two consider the sweat and moisture of Jews and Christians to be pure. The meaning of impurity is that I cannot make contact with them. That is all. This impurity does not mean that they can be killed, imprisoned, or humiliated; none of these meanings apply... How can you consider someone impure, yet that person is not humiliated? Nikayin: No... I am saying that in terms of religion and outside of religion. We have a circle of foreign nationals. Foreign nationals mean who? Those who are outside this border. That is to say, you have told some people that you are foreign. Whether we want to consider something to be humiliating or not is a matter of credibility. The impurity of something only means that a Muslim must stay away from it. That's it. Suppose I do not want to eat meat. You can ask me why, when two billion people in the world eat meat, do you not eat meat? This question is completely meaningless. Therefore... You know that these two questions are not of the same kind, Mr. Nikayin. Nikayin: No, why are they of the same kind? No, we are not concerned with the consequences. The discussion is fundamentally about the moral burden of this attribute that you assign. Nikayin: Where did you get the humiliation from? If you took the humiliation from the fact that, for example, Muslims do not eat pork, which is food for two billion people, I tell you that vegetarians... The discussion is not at all about eating and drinking, Mr. Nikayin. I told you that to consider another person impure because of their belief and religion or lack of religion, is it not selfish and humiliating? You say it is not. Let us return to Dr. Kimiayi. Mr. Kimiayi, can science provide any explanation? Even now, science is rejecting the discussion of race? Can science explain on what basis humans gain superiority over each other and can be pure or impure or contaminated?