Haram

Islamic law does not sort acts into permitted and forbidden. It sorts them into five, and the scale is what gives the system its texture. The obligatory is rewarded when done and blameworthy when left. The recommended is rewarded when done and not blamed when left. The permitted carries neither. The discouraged is blameworthy when done but not punished. The forbidden is blameworthy when done and required to be left, and refraining from it is itself the obligation.

The scale means that a great deal of religious life falls in the middle three categories, where a Muslim is being advised rather than commanded, and that describing a practice as haram is a strong legal claim rather than an expression of disapproval. Jurists are correspondingly careful about it, and a recurring criticism within the tradition is of people who reach for the strongest category when a weaker one is what the evidence supports.

There is a further refinement that catches readers out. The Hanafi school splits the forbidden in two: haram proper, established by evidence that admits no doubt, and makruh tahrimi, prohibitively discouraged, established by evidence that is strong but not decisive. The consequences differ, and a ruling that a Hanafi jurist places in the second category will often be reported outside the school simply as forbidden. A separate question is whether a forbidden act, once done, is legally effective, since a contract may be sinful and still valid, or sinful and void, depending on the case.

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.