Animals in Islamic Tradition
and Muslim Cultures

Richard M. Foltz
Oxford: One World, 2006. 192 pages.

In his peculiarly self-abasing preface to Animals in Islamic Tradition and
Muslim Cultures, Richard Foltz speculates that the audience for his book
will probably consist of “non-Muslims who are sympathetic to Muslim cul-
ture and interested in learning more about what it has to offer in terms of
animal rights” (p. xii). This appears to be less of a prediction than a presup-
position guiding the book. Appropriately, Animals in Islamic Tradition is a
very broad outline of representations of non-human animals from the pre-
Islamic era to the present in as many fields as a 192-page book can encom-
pass. As a result, his study tends to be kaleidoscopic, treating each subject in
a very general manner, hastily running through the basics and garnishing
them with selected curiosities. For perhaps the same reason, the book is writ-
ten in a very simple style, neither extremely engaging nor boringly obscure,
and tends to provide summary rather than analysis.

The issue of the non-human animal in Islam and in Islamicate cultures
is not a single question, but rather a vast number of disparate questions that
ultimately require detailed attention in themselves. Given the lack of atten-
tion hitherto received by each of these specific questions, any general sur-
vey such as Foltz’s must necessarily be tentative and exploratory. The book
is divided into seven chapters that deal, respectively, with references to ani-
mals in the Qur’an and the hadith literature (chapter 1), animal-related
injunctions in Islamic law (chapter 2), scientific and philosophical studies
(chapter 3), literary and artistic representations (chapter 4), animal rights in
the contemporary era (chapter 5), Islamic vegetarianism (chapter 6), and
Muslim attitudes toward dogs (chapter 7). Each chapter is further divided
into several subheadings, making the book something of a collection of well-
categorized articles rather than a tightly bound narrative building up to a
central argument.

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That being the case, Animals in Islamic Tradition does seem to have, if
not a thesis, then at least a slant: it is clearly concerned with championing ani-
mal rights and identifying the sources from which an Islamic emphasis on
animal rights, an Islamic vegetarianism, and the like might justify them-
selves. Foltz claims that his book is not meant to be one-sided, and he cer-
tainly recounts Muslim justifications for meat-eating and negative attitudes
toward certain animals. However, particular weight is given to Muslim pro-
ponents of animal rights and vegetarianism and to those individuals who are
set up as their predecessors. People such as the vegetarian poet al-Ma`arri, the
British imam and animal rights advocate Basheer Ahmad Masri, and Egyp-
tian dog-lover Ahmed Tharwat are undoubtedly the heroes of this book.

Foltz’s chapter on Islamic law, as well as his fifth and sixth chapters,
outline the aids and impediments to furthering animal rights in the Islami-
cate world and trace the progress made thus far. The story that the book tells
appears designed to unearth the successes of Muslim conservationists and
animal lovers and to provide present and future Muslim animal rights
activists with a history to inspire and guide their efforts. Particularly impor-
tant to this narrative are the various fatwas issued by religious scholars with
regard to human-animal relations. Foltz argues that in the Shari`ah “[i]t is
assumed without question that humans are going to make use of animals and
to eat them; the legal questions therefore center on how to define and cir-
cumscribe the limits of these behaviors” (p. 30). 

Nevertheless, the selected legal opinions show that there is a fairly con-
siderable body of injunctions regarding the treatment of domesticated ani-
mals. For example, the lists of rules given by the thirteenth-century Shafi`i
jurist `Izz al-Din al-Sulami and by the modern Shi`ite jurist Hashem Najy
Jazayery, both of whom look unfavorably upon punishing animals and forc-
ing them to carry excessively heavy loads are presented (pp. 34-35). In addi-
tion, the author refers to examples of wildlife preserves and their status
according to Islamic law (pp. 36-41). He concludes that Islamic law requires
a new era of ijtihad (independent judgment on a legal or theological ques-
tion) if it is to become more just toward animals in keeping with the new
realities of the twenty-first century, such as factory farming and extinction.

The chapters on the representation of animals in philosophical, sci-
entific, and literary texts and art, present the reader with an overview of
various mainly pre-twentieth-century sources, including Sufi literature, bes-
tiaries, and fables. Animals in Islamic Tradition is overwhelmingly con-
cerned with the practical issues that are of interest to environmentalists and
animal rights activists, and thus does not dwell at any length on the finer the-

Book Reviews 127



oretical questions, such as the question of what constitutes humanness as
opposed to non-human animality. Many of the sources presented in these
chapters, and particularly the philosophical texts with their Aristotelian and
Neoplatonic inheritances, might have been presented in the context of an
exploration of this question of humanity versus animality. 

Although the book stresses the importance of the Arabic translation of
Aristotle’s properly zoological works (Historia Animalum is mentioned) and
notes his importance to Islamicate philosophy, it appears to avoid any inves-
tigation into the more abstract discussions of animality in the Arabic version
of De Anima, commented on by Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd. It also does not
look into possible Muslim responses to references made about the animal in
the important Neoplatonic source text Theologia, an Arabic translation of a
work wrongly attributed to the Greek philosopher Plotinus. Instead, al-Razi’s
qualms about hunting are alluded to alongside environmental and taxonom-
ical ideas in the Ikhwan al-Safa’s fascinating Case of the Animals versus
Man before the King of the Jinn (Fi Tada`i al-îayawanat ̀ ala al-Insan ̀ inda
Malik al-Jinn) and the bestiaries of al-Jahiz and al-Damiri. 

For those who wish to learn about animal rights and Islam, but who are
beginners when it comes to either or both, this will be an interesting book
and an easy read. As for those who wish to delve deeply into a particular
aspect of this issue, Foltz’s bibliography is a useful – though by no means
comprehensive – pointer to the source texts to which they should turn.

Mohamad Khan
Ph.D. Candidate, Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures

Columbia University, New York City, New York

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