Woman pulling a shrimp larvea net in Burigualini , Bangladesh, April 2014/Shutterstock
Food has always been more than merely sustenance—it is a reflection of our cultural, religious, and societal values. Dietary laws play a central role in both Judaism and Islam, or kosher and halal respectively, which dictate what can and cannot be consumed, and one food that has long sparked curiosity and debate is shrimp. Let's find out more about this seafood's curious status in these religions.
In Israel, shrimp is neither served in kosher restaurants nor sold in kosher stores. The Tanakhi
The Tanakh is a collection of Jewish sacred texts known to Christians as the Old Testamentexplicitly states: ‘You may eat anything that has fins and scales in the waters, whether in the seas or rivers. But anything in the seas or rivers without feathers and scales, among all the creatures that move in the water and all the living things in the water, they are unclean for you . . .’
This prohibition, though, is quite understandable even without religious justification. Indeed, most toxic marine creatures—jellyfish, starfish, pufferfish, sea anemones, et cetera—indeed mostly don’t have scales, and most seafood, if improperly caught, stored, or prepared, can lead to such allergic reactions that they would put the effect of many poisons to shame. And especially in times when there were no refrigerators or sanitary controls, it was better not to take any risks.
The word ‘feathers’ in relation to fish means fins, and these very fins became the main obstacle in the relationship between the Jews and shrimp. On several different occasions over the years, kosher certification commissions have discussed the possibility of recognizing shrimp as kosher food since their shell is essentially a form of scales, and their tail clearly has a fin. However, the rabbinate, although in doubt about the scales, have categorically refused to recognize the shrimp's tail as a fin.
For Muslims, shrimp are considered permissible food, as are all sea creatures, because various hadiths, including those of Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, repeatedly state that everything that lives in the sea is pure.
Muslim Woman Perusing The Fish At Market Jimbaran Jimbaran Is A Thriving Fishing Village Between Kuta And Nusa Dua Famed Throughout Bali For Its Fish Every Morning At Dawn The Fishermen Return With Their Catch/Alamy
So where does the belief that Muslims aren’t allowed to eat shrimp (or sharks, mussels, oysters, and other exotic sea creatures) come from? The thing is, in Islam, the idea of haram in food doesn’t refer to only animals and plants that are explicitly prohibited for consumption. It also includes many other factors—such as how they were slaughtered, the health of the animal, and so on. Specifically, Muslims are not allowed to eat food that can cause disgust or rejection, or what appears inedible or frightening.
However, food traditions vary significantly among different peoples, and they are influenced by the climate of a region, its features, and traditions. For example, in the case of an Indonesian living in the warm environment of the seaside, shrimp or scallops are natural and familiar food. But for a Kazakh, shrimp were, for obvious reasons, not encountered for centuriesiThough a few species of small shrimp are present in the Caspian Sea, they only appeared there in the twentieth century, having been unintentionally introduced by aquaculture enterprises. These shrimp were brought along with several fish species, such as mullet, which were introduced to enhance the fauna of the Caspian Sea. Therefore, a cautious attitude toward this unfamiliar food was also quite natural. This rendered shrimp and other seafood a subject of debate and uncertainty, leading some madhhabsiA madhhab is a school of thought or Islamic school of law and is also known as a fiqh. There are four sub-groups within Sunni Islam: Maliki, Hanafi, Hanbali, and Shafi'ito classify them as not halal.
And thus nowadays, when supermarkets are stocked with shrimp, the once-powerful significance of the taboo has faded, and it is hard to scare a modern Kazakh with shrimp. Nevertheless, the Hanafi madhhab, the legal school to which most Kazakhstani Muslims traditionally belong, requires that halal restaurants clearly indicate which dishes contain shrimp, allowing individuals to decide for themselves which tradition they wish to follow regarding seafood.
Muslim Woman Selling Dry Shrimps And Squids At Crab Market/Alamy