(121) “Do not eat of that over which Allah’s name has not been mentioned, for that is indeed grave disobedience. The devils do indeed inspire their allies to dispute with you. If you obey them, you will surely be polytheists.”

This prohibition includes anything over which the name of other than Allah has been invoked, such as what is slaughtered for idols and their gods. This is among that which has been dedicated to other than Allah and is expressly prohibited by the revealed text.

It also includes animals slaughtered for Allah—such as sacrificial animals and offerings—or slaughtered for meat and consumption, if the slaughterer deliberately omits mentioning Allah’s name, according to many scholars.

One who forgets is excluded from this general ruling by other texts indicating that blame is lifted from him. This verse also includes carrion that died without lawful slaughter, for Allah’s name was not mentioned over it.

Allah specifically mentions carrion in His words, “Forbidden to you is carrion.” It may indeed have been the occasion for the revelation of this verse, given His words, “The devils do indeed inspire their allies to dispute with you”—without knowledge.

When the polytheists heard that Allah and His Messenger had prohibited carrion and permitted properly slaughtered animals—while they themselves deemed carrion lawful to eat—they said, in defiance of Allah and His Messenger and in argument without proof or evidence, “Do you eat what you have killed, yet not eat what Allah has killed?” By this they meant carrion.

This is a corrupt view founded on neither proof nor evidence, but only on their corrupt opinions—opinions which, if the truth were to follow them, would bring the heavens, the earth, and all who dwell in them to ruin.

Perdition, then, to those who place such reasoning above Allah’s law and rulings, which accord with the common good and individual benefit. Nor should this be thought strange coming from them, for these and similar views arise from the inspiration of their allies among the devils, who seek to lead people away from their religion and summon them to become companions of the Blaze.

“If you obey them” in their polytheism, their permitting what is forbidden, and their forbidding what is lawful, “you will surely be polytheists,” because you will have taken them as allies besides Allah and agreed with them in that by which they parted ways with the Muslims. Your path will therefore be their path.

This noble verse also indicates that inspirations and unveilings arising in the heart—which frequently occur among Sufis and others like them—do not, merely in themselves, prove that they are true, nor are they to be accepted as true until they are measured against the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Messenger.