Impermissibility of eating from the food offerings to idols

Question #305:

In our country, during the festivals of Hindus (kuffār) , some hindus offer sacrificial animals and some offer some food like sweets to their idols. Is it permissible to receive and eat from the sweets while we know eating from the meat is ḥarām? Some people argue that the meat is ḥarām but the sweets can be eaten because the āyah of prohibition only prohibits the meat. Yā Shaykh! please clarify in the light of evidences. May Allāh grant you success.

Answer :

Shaykh has mentioned that all kinds of offering done to idols comes under the prohibition mentioned in the āyah (al-Māʾidah : 3 and some other verses) including sweets and it is not permitted to eat from them.

حُرِّمَتْ عَلَيْكُمُ الْمَيْتَةُ وَالدَّمُ وَلَحْمُ الْخِنزِيرِ وَمَا أُهِلَّ لِغَيْرِ اللَّهِ بِهِ وَالْمُنْخَنِقَةُ وَالْمَوْقُوذَةُ وَالْمُتَرَدِّيَةُ وَالنَّطِيحَةُ وَمَا أَكَلَ السَّبُعُ إِلَّا مَا ذَكَّيْتُمْ وَمَا ذُبِحَ عَلَى النُّصُبِ

Forbidden to you (for food) are: Al-Maytatah (the dead animals – cattle-beast not slaughtered), blood, the flesh of swine, and the meat of that which has been slaughtered as a sacrifice for others than Allah, or has been slaughtered for idols, etc., or on which Allāh’s Name has not been mentioned while slaughtering, and that which has been killed by strangling, or by a violent blow, or by a headlong fall, or by the goring of horns – and that which has been (partly) eaten by a wild animal – unless you are able to slaughter it (before its death) – and that which is sacrificed (slaughtered) on an-Nuṣub (stone altars).

al-Māʾidah: 3

Answered by: Shaykh Abu Bilal al-Ḥaḍramī حفظه الله

Translated and Summarized by: ʿAbd an-Nūr al-Hindī