Table Talk
by Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din
Chapter 12: The Moving Zoo
Human nature is a conglomeration of the whole animal kingdom. It is an epitome of the vast diversity of temperament and disposition met with in the myriads of God’s creatures. It combines within itself, in a potential form, the courage of the lion, the meekness of the lamb, the neatness of the cat and the dirtiness of the pig, the vindictiveness of the camel and the forbearance of the ass; and likewise, it partakes of the nature of every species of lower animal. Man is thus a huge moving zoo, within which you can find any animal you would — bird or beast, insect or fish.
Man and animal both receive their peculiar shape and nature from a common stock. The same ingredients go to form the body and nature of a man as those of a dog, a cow or any other thing. Which particular form those ingredients may assume depends upon their quantity in each case. One measure of the same material may give shape to an ant; another, to an elephant. The same difference in magnitude is responsible for the diversity of tendency and disposition each one displays. The camel, for instance, is not only distinct from the cow in its physical frame, but also in its instincts and passions. If the one is a repository of revengefulness, the other is an embodiment of meekness and docility. In brief, the diversity in the measure of stuff common to all, has given rise to diversity both in form and temperament.
Man, however, enjoys a distinction in this respect. Whereas every animal has its nature wrought of a specific measure of ingredients, resulting in a specific tendency, human nature is not so limited. It is cast in an all-comprehensive mold. The numerous measures that go to create, each one of them, this temperament or that, in one particular animal, are all collectively blended together in the nature of man. To this effect says the Holy Quran:
لَقَدۡ خَلَقۡنَا الۡاِنۡسَانَ فِیۡۤ اَحۡسَنِ تَقۡوِیۡمٍ ۫﴿۴﴾
“Verily We have created man of the goodliest fabric.” [The Holy Quran, 95:4]
Thus, the passions that severally find manifestation in individual animals, are represented as a whole texture of human nature. Besides, in the case of lower animals, the dominating passion is incapable of any regulation or control. It has an unrestrained mastery of its object. The wolf, for instance, or the tiger is endowed with a tendency to tear up weaker animals into pieces. It cannot go against this innate prompting. It is incapable of exercising any check over this call of its nature.
The pig, likewise, cannot shake off its habits of dirtiness and sex-impudence. Similarly, the monkey, the dog, the rabbit, the cock, each has a particular tendency, as the product of a specific measure of ingredients employed in its make. Each must be swayed by the same under all circumstances. Thus, these lower animals are possessed of tendencies unalterably chalked out and delineated. No regulation, no evolution, no improvement is possible in their case. But man, the lord of creation, has an unlimited scope of progress. His faculties truly trained and cultivated, he is capable of penetrating into the mysteries of heaven and earth. He can unravel deep Divine secrets.
As already explained, this difference between man and animals is also due to the difference in the measures of formative ingredients which assume different forms of flesh and bones, ingrained with different kinds of passions. In the make of man there is a harmonious and well-balanced mixture of all these. It is thus obvious that the flesh of an animal which may form the food of man, becomes part and parcel of his body and lends additional weight to the like ingredients already existent in his nature. And ultimately, it leads to the manifestation, on his part, of the characteristic tendencies of that animal. For this reason, Islam forbids the eating of the flesh of certain animals.