Muslims affirm that the flesh of swine is haram, forbidden, on the explicit text of four Quranic passages (2:173, 5:3, 6:145, 16:115) that name pork alongside carrion, blood, and food consecrated to other than God among unlawful things. Because the ruling rests on direct scriptural wording rather than on analogical reasoning (qiyas), classical jurisprudence treats it as settled beyond dispute, among the small set of food rules classed as nass rather than derived by ijtihad, leaving essentially no room for a school to reach a different conclusion the way schools differ over, say, the permissibility of certain seafood or the use of alcohol in medicine.
Exegetes have long asked why the pig specifically was singled out, and the tradition's answer has been divided. Many classical commentators, including al-Razi, proposed the animal's uncleanliness or a health rationale consistent with the fiqh classification of the live pig as najis, ritually impure, a status that also governs contact, such as touching a pig's saliva or hide, not only eating its flesh. The majority position, however, holds that the command needs no discovered reason at all: obedience is owed to the text regardless of whether its wisdom is known, and speculative rationales are offered as edifying, never as the ground of the ruling itself. The Quran's own concession, that necessity lifts the sin for one who does not desire the food or exceed need, is read as confirming rather than softening the rule, since an exception implies the general prohibition it excuses.