The Rule of the Muslims' Market

From the introduction..

As it appears, the paradox has manifested itself in the egregious distance of contemporary discourse from the givens of religion. For while religion establishes a general rule so that the markets of the Muslims may be well ordered, their interests set right by it, and their food and clothing made wholesome through its application, we find that, in the discourse of many religious guides, they practice a discourse entirely contrary to those aims: they call on the Muslim to examine closely when buying from the Muslims' market, to scrutinize the identity of the seller, or to pursue the attainment of personal certainty that the meat sold has been ritually slaughtered—with what follows from that in obliging people to ask and to monitor, or to refrain, to shun buying, and not to eat from those markets.

Indeed, they present this guidance as the guidance by which the believer is saved through his precaution for his religion; and, conversely, the believer who buys from the Muslims' market without asking, relying on the legal rule established in fiqh, is presented as lax in his religion, not caring about the foods that enter his stomach.

The arguments put forward in this context—which rejects eating from the Muslims' markets and calls for examination and asking—are many and varied, and we will study and address them in this research. However, the general outcome of the practice to which contemporary discourse calls with regard to examination is contrary to the practice followed by the pure Imams (a), and at variance with the practice of the believers that is connected to the practice of the Infallibles (a); indeed, it contradicts the texts transmitted from the Ahl al-Bayt (a), which are the pivot of legislation and of establishing the practice of communities of faith. Perhaps this flaw and this paradox are among the greatest errors of application into which the discourse of some religious guides has fallen.