I think we have said enough about the poison animal, called in Arabic khanzier(khan meaning “I see” and zier meaning “very foul”). Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the swine is the filthiest and foulest animal human beings could have resorted to for food. The flesh of the swine, while cooking, has a very different smell from that of other animal’s flesh while cooking. And even when it is not being cooked, it is full of worms.
In many cases, the eater of the flesh becomes nauseated when the flesh is being fried in the early morning. It is a divinely prohibited flesh and God (Allah) has prohibited you and me, my Brothers and Sisters of the Black Nation, from eating it or even touching its dead carcass.
Please, for our health’s sake, stop eating it; for our beauty’s sake, stop eating it; for our obedience to God and His Laws against this flesh, stop eating it; for a longer life, stop eating it; and for the sake of modesty, stop eating it.
Do you know, that if we, the 22 million lost-found members of our Nation here in America would stop eating this pig, (his poison swine flesh), it would mean a great economic savings to us? And I do not think the government would be so eager to eat it themselves if we would obey this Divine law against the divinely prohibited flesh. There is an old, foolish answer our people have given to such advice: “The White folks eat it, and my grandparents ate it, and they lived to be 75 and 80 years old.”
If Noah and Methuselah had heard you boasting that your parents lived only 75 or 80 years eating poison, they would have considered your parents as never having grown up to become adults, according to their good way of eating the best food about twice a week, and living nearly 1,000 of our present calendar year that consists of 365 days.
God does not punish us for the crime of disobedience to His law if we are ignorant of His laws. But after knowledge of His laws, He is justified in punishing us by setting the full penalty according to the disobedience.
As I have previously said in this book, most vegetables that are sold on the public market are good to eat with the exception of those Allah prohibits, such as collard greens and the rough turnip salads. You have plenty of other vegetables to eat. And, you have good peas other than lima beans, field butter beans, called baby lima beans, and black-eyed peas (field peas as we called them).
Eat the good fruit and the good vegetables according to your condition. Some of us cannot eat even the best of these because of the condition of our health.
You are your judge there.
(Reprinted from “How To Eat To Live,” Book II, 1972.)
