How a Thing Becomes Forbidden, and the Other Meaning of the Word

A prohibition has to be established, and the routes are limited. An explicit text in the Quran or an authenticated report is the strongest. Analogy extends an existing prohibition to a case sharing its operative reason, which is how intoxicants other than the one named in the sources are treated. Consensus settles some questions. Beyond these there is blocking the means, the principle that something otherwise permitted may be forbidden because it reliably leads to something forbidden, which is powerful and correspondingly disputed, since it can be extended almost without limit.

Two presumptions organise the whole field and they run in opposite directions. In ordinary transactions and worldly matters the presumption is permission, so a practice is lawful until something shows otherwise, and the burden lies on whoever asserts the prohibition. In acts of worship the presumption is the reverse, so a form of worship needs authorisation rather than merely the absence of a ban. Much of what looks from outside like inconsistency between rulings on commerce and rulings on ritual follows from this pair.

The word has a second sense that is older and can confuse. The same root gives the noun for a sanctuary, so the Haram at Mecca and the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem are precincts set apart, with their own rules about who may enter and what may be done there, and the pilgrim state of ihram belongs to the same family. Forbidden and sacred meet in the idea of something withdrawn from ordinary use.