The Feast (Al-Maa 'edah)
In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate
۞ O believers, fulfil your bonds. Permitted to you is the beast of the flocks, except that which is now recited to you, so that you deem not game permitted to be hunted when you are in pilgrim sanctity. God decrees whatsoever He desires. 1 O believers, profane not God's waymarks nor the holy month, neither the offering, nor the necklaces, nor those repairing to the Holy House seeking from their Lord bounty and good pleasure. But when you have quit your pilgrim sanctity, then hunt for game. Let not detestation for a people who barred you from the Holy Mosque move you to commit aggression. Help one another to piety and godfearing; do not help each other to sin and enmity. And fear God; surely God is terrible in retribution. 2 FORBIDDEN to you is carrion, and blood, and the flesh of swine, and that over which any name other than God's has been invoked, and the animal that has been strangled, or beaten to death, or killed by a fall, or gored to death, or savaged by a beast of prey, save that which you [yourselves] may have slaughtered while it was still alive; and [forbidden to you is] all that has been slaughtered on idolatrous altars. And [you are forbidden] to seek to learn through divination what the future may hold in store for you: this is sinful conduct. Today, those who are bent on denying the truth have lost all hope of [your ever forsaking] your religion: do not, then, hold them in awe, but stand in awe of Me! Today have I perfected your religious law for you, and have bestowed upon you the full measure of My blessings, and willed that self-surrender unto Me shall be your religion. As for him, however, who is driven [to what is forbidden] by dire necessity and not by an inclination to sinning - behold, God is much-forgiving, a dispenser of grace. 3 They ask you what is lawful for them. Say: "All things are lawful for you that are clean, and what the trained hunting animals take for you as you have trained then, in the light of God's teachings, but read over them the name of God, and fear (straying from the path of) God, for God is swift in the reckoning." 4 This day all good things have been made lawful to you. The food of the People of the Book is permitted to you, and your food is permitted to them. And permitted to you are chaste women, be they either from among the believers or from among those who have received the Book before you, provided you become their protectors in wedlock after paying them their bridal-due, rather than go around committing fornication and taking them as secret-companions. The work of he who refuses to follow the way of faith will go waste, and he will be among the utter losers in the Hereafter. 5