By Karimah Bint Dawoud, Muslim chaplain & wellbeing writer

 

There comes a time in all our lives when we need to change, when it comes to food too many of us stick to the same ole, same ole recipes, some people eat same food year after years generation after generation even if the location the environment, the temperature is different and this is not good because although our body is adapting to our surroundings, we are not giving it the fuel to enhance those adaptions and so diseases occurs, its simple really. To support the changes the body has to make to a damper colder environment with less sunshine we have to feed it different food and drink and in some cases supplements.

Have you notice when you go to some where hot like  ummrah that you don’t feel like eating that much but you want to drink? You body is responding to the environment it’s in and what we eat and drink has to harmonise and support that adaption.

However too many of us stick to the familiar for security, it gives us a sense of attachment to “home” even when we are miles way. The problem with this way of thinking is that Allah Creation all around us is in a process of constant change, for example the weather in the UK is definitely getting warmer, hard to believe on a rainy day, but there are birds in the UK now, like green parakeets, that were not here 10 years ago, there are palms and orchids growing outside, no longer confined to green houses.

And so it’s time for another shift in terms of food, seems like I’m am going back to go forward, an ancient Ghanaian concept called “sankofa” taking from the past into the future, still now is a new time with new information and reasoning  and the future is green not orange.

There have been number of signs indicating the need to eat more vegetarian food. As some of you know I was a Rasta for 7 years and study with a pan African Egyptology group for two years, in that time I was a pescatarian, a vegetarian and a vegan, coming to Islam was a green light to eat meat again, however the daily consumption of meat is not Islamic, it is not part of the sunnah and this is one of the reason why we have such sickness in our ummah.

NO MEATS FOR DAYS

It was narrated by Ayesha, radiallahu anha, the wife of the prophet Muhammad, salah la alahi wa salem,

(6) Narrated Urwa: Aisha said to me, “O my nephew! We used to see the crescent, and then the crescent and then the crescent in this way we saw three crescents in two months and no fire (for cooking) used to be made in the houses of Allah’s Apostle. I said, “O my aunt! Then what use to sustain you?” ‘Aisha said, “The two black things: dates and water, our neighbors from Ansar had some Manarh and they used to present Allah’s Apostle some of their milk and he used to make us drink.”  (BUKHARI Book #47, Hadith #741)

 

This hadith clearly shows us that that meat is not necessary to be consumed every day for the body’s survival, however with all hadith the context is important, in a cold country like UK it would take more than dates and water  and milk to survive healthily because of the temperature and environment are different from the Holy Land. It’s something to think about and when you’re ready to try something different, please email us at karimahscuisinaa@gmail.com to be an official tester for these new VEGETARIAN recipes, thank you.