Granular Ruminations II: Islamic Law and the Food Crisis

Introduction

Anyone who has been reading or listening to the news over the past months has taken notice of the food crisis. Prices have risen at an alarming rate and yet there is no actual world-wide food shortage. The problem is not with the amount of food available, but rather, with its management. Not surprisingly, there are Islamic laws and guidelines that, if followed, would alleviate, if not eliminate, much of the problem. After discussing the content of this article with a friend, he laughed it off, indicating that the non-Muslim subjects of Islamic lands -- let alone non-Muslims in their own countries -- were not bound by many of the prescripts of Islamic Law. While this is true, disobeying Allah has dire consequences even when not legally punishable in this world. Scholars are unanimous that non-Muslims are not required to pray or give zakah, yet we find them regretting this in the Hereafter, as Allah mentions in the context of believers questioning the denizens of Hell:

قالوا ما سلككم في سقر قالوا لم نك من المصلين و لم نك نطعم المسكين

They will say, "What brought you into Hell?" They will say, "We were not among those who prayed nor did we used to feed the poor."
(Qur'an, 74.42-44)

Furthermore, the strongest position within Islamic scholarship is that those who have never heard the message of Islam will not be punished in the Hereafter, yet it is obvious that alcoholism and other vices are destructive even if one is not morally responsible for avoiding them. Thus, the point of this article is not to present solutions that can be applied over a short timespan, but rather, to provide material for people to reflect upon regarding the wisdom of Islamic Law. Allah Most High says:

ظهر الفساد في البر والبحر بما كسبت أيدي الناس ليذيقهم بعض الذي عملوا لعلهم يرجعون

Corruption has appeared in the land and the sea on account of what the hands of men have wrought, that He may make them taste a part of that which they have done, so that they may return.
(Qur'an, 30.41)

In explaining a number of verses, classical texts of Qur'anic exegesis leave no doubt that ignoring the commandments of Allah often results in hunger and natural disasters. The focal point, as mentioned in the above verse, is that people reflect upon what is happening to them and thereby return to Allah in obedience.

Problems and Solutions

Ignoring the obvious, like the prohibition of crop destruction and stockpiling to keep prices high, there are a number of other Islamic regulations regarding food:

1. The prohibition of waste. A recent article in the Star indicates that 210 million kilograms of food is thrown out in Toronto each year, most of it edible, and much of it in its original packaging. It doesn't take an economics major to realise that the less we waste, the less we buy, thereby decreasing the demand for food, and ultimately dropping its price on the market.
   After graduating from high school in 1990, I spent my summer vacation in Egypt. It pained me to see bread shamelessly thrown into the garbage. In Egypt, the word for bread is `aysh, meaning, "life." It is as if this waste foreshadowed the tossing of Egyptian life into the rubbish mounds: eighteen years later, Egyptians would die in bread riots. Further back in the early seventies, my parents had immigrated to Canada and my father worked on a ship with a number of Italian-Canadians. Upon finishing his lunch, a young man proceeded to drop-kick the unwanted remainder of his sandwich over the side of the ship. An older Italian man saw this and punched him so hard that he spun around a couple times under the force of the blow. "During the war, your mother would have slept with someone for that piece of bread", he told him. If life is sacred, then anything that attenuates life-support must necessarily be profane.
2. Islamic Law mandates that a certain portion of crops be given to the poor. Zakah is not charity: it is the property of the poor and farmers are obliged to discharge it. Under an Islamic state, the ruler takes the zakah by force from those who owe it and distributes it among worthy recipients. The Hanafi school is the strictest in this regard, declaring zakah due on all crops. The more lenient position of the Shafi'i and Maliki schools is that zakah is only due on staple crops (i.e. those that can be stored long-term and provide primary nutrition) such as grains, legumes, dried dates, and raisins. (A Shafi'i scholar in the United Kingdom told me that the zakah of Eid Al-Fitr, which must be paid in the staple of the land according to the Shafi'i school, could be paid in potatoes in a place like Ireland. This would seem to indicate that it is considered a staple crop and zakah of crops would be due upon it as well.) Taking the lenient Shafi'i position, zakah is only due on crops if the yield is greater than 715 kg of grain. Ten percent of eligible crop is due if it is watered naturally and five percent if grown on irrigated land. In 2006, the world produced over 695 million metric tons of maize, 634 million metric tons of rice, and 605 million metric tons of wheat. Assuming that 95% of farmers produce more than the miniscule 715 kg of grain per crop and that they all irrigate their land (thereby qualifying for the lower zakah percentage) means that 33 million metric tons of maize, 30 million metric tons of rice, and 28.7 million metric tons of wheat are already the property of the poor. Again, this is not charity: this is their property according to Islamic Law.
3. Alcoholic beverages are almost entirely based on staple crops, including grains, grapes, and potatoes. A colossal amount of food is being wasted in the production of products that are interdicted by Islamic Law. Were these foodstuffs to be used in feeding people, they would flood the market and the price of food would drop dramatically. This idea is not as revolutionary or Islamicentric as it might seem: Open Fight to Keep Grain from Liquor was published in the New York Times in 1917 and was unrelated to any temperance movement.
   

Postscript

The above points are a mere sampling of some of the more obvious ways in which Islamic Law can alleviate the food crisis. There are certainly other laws that regulate foodstuffs that I did not mention above because I'm not sure how (or if) they affect the cost of food. There is also the more general worldwide price increase of everything that is tied to the increased price of petroleum, which in turn is due to a lack of peace and political stability in Muslim heartlands, but that is beyond the scope of this article.