Originally published on expo2015

These are the words of the Imam of the CO.RE.IS Islamic Religious Community in Italy, interviewed during the inter-religious round table held in Milan on April 23 and focused on The Menu of Happiness and The Ethics of Food. Yahya Pallavicini is a second generation Italian Muslim citizen and Imam of the al-Wahid Mosque in Milan and Vice President of CO.RE.IS. (Comunità Religiosa Islamica Italiana), and also ambassador of ISESCO (Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) for dialogue between cultures. For five legislatures he has acted as an expert on Islam in Italy for the Italian Ministry of the Interior, Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Education. He is also a member of the European Council of Religious Leaders and of delegations of international Muslim experts in the Vatican’s Catholic-Muslim Forum.

In your religious beliefs, what is the definition of happiness and what kind of diet contributes to feeding it? The Sacred Quran uses a term which synthesizes the root of all happiness, namely Good. To seek goodness and to do good is the source of true happiness. The diet for feeding happiness is to follow a religion to the point of perfection and to nourish oneself gratefully with spiritual benefits. The believer’s diet is the remembrance of Allah: a Muslim should know how to be happy when they are ill and when they are healthy, when they are poor and when they are rich, if they have learned to live being conscious of the constant gifts and incommensurable grace of Allah. A Muslim’s diet, when fasting and when interrupting a fast by eating a date, is a double happiness: discovering the benefit of fasting brings joy, discovering the benefit of nourishment brings joy.

What significance does fasting have in your religion? An Islamic tradition teaches that of all the religious acts which Allah commands the Muslim to carry out, fasting is most his own. The believer renounces his or her self and – insofar as they refrain from their self and remember their Lord – they thus carry out Allah’s act of being nourishment in the heart of His servants. Muslims forget about their stomachs and their appetites and discover the taste of spiritual presence, become conscious of a higher world, a world which goes beyond and above appetites and guides them to the taste of Truth. Once the believer has tasted this taste, they retain it even when they return to eating. Other sages indicate that the value of fasting lies in purifying oneself of appetite and also of egoism, pride, greed, vanity, material possession and forgetfulness of Goodness.

How is food represented, what are its most important characteristics, and what values is it connected with? In the Sacred Quran, we find references to the earth, to the palm tree, to olive oil, the lotus tree, manna, quails, milk, meat, fruit and water. Each one of these is mentioned, and helps believers to approach these foodstuffs with a sensibility attuned not only to satisfying the stomach but also to nourishing their lives while respecting all of creation. Their relationship with food therefore consists essentially of nourishment and taste, but also of the rediscovery of the connection between earth and mankind, and between mankind and heaven.

Sustenance should therefore not be interpreted only on a personal, physical or dietary level, but also on a symbolic and functional level. The loss of this universal perspective makes mankind short-sighted in its relationship with the earth and insensitive in its relationship with the food which nourishes it. “Eat and drink, without excess” (Quran, VII, 31). Harith ibn Kalada is known as one of the most ancient and wisest physicians of the Arab people: one day he was asked “What is the best medicine?” He replied “Necessity, in other words hunger.” Then he was asked “What is disease?” He replied “The addition of more food to sufficient food.”

Do you have a story or a tradition or an anecdote regarding food? I remember when there were no food shops in Milan which sold meat slaughtered according to Islamic practice. And so the first Italian Muslim families, like ours, bought their meat from Jewish butchers, because the Jewish community had succeeded in developing methods which respected both their own theological rules and local sanitary regulations.

This was a first experience of inter-faith dialogue, based on respect, hospitality and brotherhood. We share some of the Jewish Community’s rules, such as the prohibition of pork products and the obligation of ritual slaughter, while Muslims also observe the prohibition of drinks that contain fermented alcohol.

To conclude on a lighter note, touching on cultural prejudice: it is frequently wrongly imagined that Muslims fast for thirty days and thirty nights, that eat nothing but couscous and that they drink tea only in the desert! Thankfully, Muslim cuisine offers great variety and is happy to share its many flavors and spices with other believers and with all the peoples of the Planet.

Today’s agricultural systems for producing food threaten to severely damage the planet. How important is it for your religion that food be produced in an ethical manner or that it not be wasted? The alteration of productive processes following an exclusively quantitative ‘consumer’ logic, and a purely economic vision, imposes a profound anomaly upon the laws of creation and above all on the awareness of connection with the Creator. It is fundamental to have a religious and ethical perspective. Unfortunately, the speculative perspective of the agricultural industry seems to be blind to the appeals of wise minds from various religions, and frenzied consumerism generates false perceptions of wealth and poverty, along with an abundance of vice and an abundance of misery.