Al-An'am 143: (Consisting of males and females, Allah) created eight pairs, two from sheep, two from goat. Say, “did Allah forbid the males, the females or the ones in the wombs of the females? Explain this to me with knowledge, if you are truthful.”

To verse 143 of Surah Al-An'am we have come.

As male and female He created eight mates. He counts eight mates. Two of sheep, two of goats. Yes. Well, did He forbid their males, or their females, or the young in the wombs of these two females? Tell me with knowledge, if you are truthful, it says. (?) Now what does it say here? Two of sheep, two of goats. That makes four. Which are the other four? Two of camels, two of cattle. That makes eight. Yes. Those will come too, God willing. Allah Almighty. Those people, of goats, of sheep, of what was in their bellies, would make things forbidden and lawful for themselves. Against what they said, Allah Almighty now shows these two as an example.

What does it say? As male and female He created eight mates. Two of sheep, two of goats. Well, did He forbid their males, or their females, or the young in the wombs of these two females? Tell me with knowledge, if you are truthful. Yet Allah forbade none of them. He (?) all of them to people's service. But people, busying themselves with their own ideologies in the name of religion, within their own ideologies, deifying their own nafs, because they turned their backs on Allah, because they followed Satan's footsteps and made friends with him, Satan led them off the path. Yes.

Allah, of the sheep and camel kinds, eight mates (?).

Two of these as mates are sheep, and two as mates are goats. Some people, of their young, the females, sometimes the males, would consider forbidden. Sometimes they would consider both forbidden. Their behaving like this was so that they could profit in their own interest. So although Allah, with His verse, made known to people what is forbidden and what is lawful, people, not listening to Allah's verses, undertaking things they think are in their own interest, many calamities and diseases they incur.

Allah sent His verses to give people life. In this respect, also again in His verse, addressing people, Allah Almighty: did He forbid to you their males, or their females, or what is in the wombs of these two females, that is, what is in the wombs of the females of this sheep and goat? You know how the Arabs used to say, we covered it in our previous lesson. If the animal gives birth to a female, that is, gives birth to a female, gives birth alive, it is only for the men. Women cannot eat it. If the female is born dead, that is, the female gives birth dead, that is, if the young in her womb is born dead, then women and men eat it together, jointly, they would say.

So Allah Almighty, Allah Almighty too: which of these did Allah forbid to you? O man! Not by the Creator's command but for your own interest, with rulings your own reason gave, if you come before Me tomorrow, do you know where you will go, He says. He wants to remind him of it here. Yes.

If you say you are truthful people, tell me with knowledge, He says. If you say you are truthful people, tell me with knowledge. Now this is very much a point that brings man close to the truth, rules him with what is right, where good and bad, or truth and falsehood, are distinguished, the very point. This place. If you are truthful people, tell me with knowledge. What does this mean? Allah Almighty is free of deficient attributes. He made everything known with His verses. Every verse rests on knowledge. Haphazardly you (?) and this is forbidden, it is like this, like that, this is lawful for us, these born ones, forbidden, if born dead this is forbidden, saying so, no.

Say it by basing it on knowledge, He says, say it by basing it on knowledge.

Now they say the same about me, you know, this fake Sheikh Metin Efendi, they say, fake. He says fake, and sir, he makes every kind of slander too: this man denies the hadiths too, he says. This man, sir, denies the sunnahs too, they say, he says anyway. Can he base this on any knowledge? (?) But I prove everything I say with a verse. This now is the same situation. One: what the polytheists said against Allah Almighty's command without bringing any proof, and those people with their slanders against me; although I bring them verses and show my proofs, their slanders resting on no proof at all.

Now how well the verses are understood. What does it say? If you are truthful people, tell me with knowledge. That knowledge: instead of smearing me like this, with knowledge; what is knowledge? The verses of Allah Almighty in the Holy Quran. Am I not telling you the verses? I am telling the verses. Well, although I tell those verses, can he say, you explained this verse backwards like this, you contradicted that verse? He can't. He cannot. Because he doesn't have that knowledge. But when it comes to smearing people out of the whims of the nafs, learn people's situations. Learn. How beautiful. With His verses Allah tells us how truth and falsehood are.

Truth speaks with verses. Falsehood speaks with slanders, with words, without proof in hand. Well, you speak the truth. Is there proof? The verses. I tell the verses. My proof is the verses. Well, do those things being said have proof? No. Superstitions against the verses. Yes. Allah Almighty's having people prove things to Him with knowledge here is so that they find Allah's existence. Yes. We say the same thing to them. You too oppose me with knowledge or with a verse, so that with the verse Allah's knowledge you may find. Yes. Not with words. With words you cannot find Allah's knowledge.

By this He means that Allah Almighty, so that all the things He created can find life, created the foods they would need in their lives. Which food and nourishment benefits which of His creatures? Since Allah knows this, He made known to people what benefits and what does not. In this respect, the meat and milk of sheep and goats are among the chief main elements of human food. People's forbidding these to themselves would be a ruling made in place of Allah Almighty, and people would wrong their own nafs. Yes. In this verse too, how beautifully truth and falsehood are separated. Truth and falsehood. They are separated very beautifully.

In this respect, Allah Almighty, for people to benefit, these animals created. For people to benefit. If these animals serve us this much with their lives and their goods, and Allah Almighty, the human He created honored, a human He created so sublime, if He has them serve people with their lives and their goods, when a person benefits from its meat, its milk, and partakes, because of that generosity of Allah Almighty to that person, when he puts that morsel in his mouth, not a tear will come from his eyes. He won't say, my Allah, was I worthy of this? And he won't reflect on and think of his Lord, because He spreads the blessings before him.

I have chickens in my garden. I feed them. When I eat their eggs, to my Lord, that chicken, that helpless, that chicken He created, you eat its egg as if in need of it. He gave it to you as (?). Sir, He makes it serve you. He makes that (?) chicken serve you. That animal and that, because it serves us, although it is lawful for us, we cannot even (?) eat it. No. Yes. That is why every blessing of our Lord cannot keep us from being immersed in reflection. That is why we recall the verse. Before your eyes, it says, hundreds of miracles appear; you are blind, you do not see, it says. For every miracle of His, for everything we see, we try to give thanks to our Lord.

Yes. In this respect, Allah Almighty, for people to benefit, these animals created. Had He forbidden them, since the meat and milk of these animals would be harmful to people, He would have forbidden them. For example, the things He forbade, such as pork, carrion and blood, since they would cause diseases or deaths in the human body, to protect people, Allah Almighty forbade them.

Pork, carrion and blood. In pork there is trichina; even when food is cooked, when meat is cooked, that trichina does not die, it passes to the person and makes him ill. And with all kinds of germs people catch diseases. And today many of those who eat pork are a factory producing disease.

Blood: circulating in the human body, or circulating in animals, circulating in the veins, a fluid. Germs get into this blood. That blood, with the white cells in the blood, by eating the white cells, weakens the animal, and that animal develops ailments in some organs. In this case the animal's meat too becomes germ-laden. And a diseased animal hardly comes. So even if it is not diseased, if germs have settled in its blood, this we cannot know; by drinking that blood that germ passes into your body, and then take your pick of deaths, take your pick of diseases. Carrion is the same. After a while it fills with bacteria and those bacteria begin to putrefy.

What does Allah Almighty do with what is forbidden to the human body? He prohibits it. (?) What a predator has torn, because those traits in it, or the germs in that animal's mouth, get into that meat. If you eat that meat, together with those germs you get sick. In this respect He protects you. But it says: if you reach what a predator has torn before it dies and slaughter it, that is, it tore it but before it died. It couldn't eat it yet, that is. A live animal. You slaughter it. If germs from its mouth got into that animal's blood, by letting the blood flow you remove it from there. You save its meat. In this case sir, by man observing Allah Almighty's commands, what is lawful and what is forbidden, Allah Almighty makes known to people.

The reason is to protect the human body.