Few things mark a religious community as plainly as what it eats. Three of the four Abrahamic traditions keep detailed food laws; the fourth set most of them aside in its first generation. The rules differ in their details, but they rest on a shared conviction that eating is an act before God.
Kashrut: the Jewish table
The Torah permits land animals that both chew the cud and have split hooves, which excludes the pig, the camel and the hare; fish with fins and scales; and birds not listed among the forbidden. Blood may not be eaten, and three times the Torah forbids boiling a kid in its mother’s milk, from which the rabbis derived the complete separation of meat and dairy.1 Food prepared according to these laws is kosher, fit.
The Christian table
The Gospel of Mark reports Jesus saying that nothing entering a person from outside can defile him, and adds that in saying this he declared all foods clean. In Acts, Peter sees a sheet let down from heaven full of animals and hears a voice telling him not to call unclean what God has made clean.2 The council of Jerusalem kept only a short list for Gentile believers, to abstain from food offered to idols, from blood and from what is strangled, and in time most churches dropped even these.3 Christianity kept its food customs in the calendar instead, in the fasts of Lent and the Orthodox abstention from meat and dairy on fast days.
Ḥalāl: the Muslim table
The Qur’an forbids carrion, blood, the flesh of swine and what has been dedicated to other than God, and permits whatever a believer is forced to eat to survive.4 Wine and other intoxicants are forbidden. An animal is slaughtered with the name of God pronounced over it, by a swift cut that drains the blood. Food that meets these conditions is ḥalāl (حَلَال, permitted). The list of forbidden meats is shorter than the Torah’s, and the Qur’an presents some of the Jewish prohibitions as a burden placed on the Israelites for their conduct, lifted from those who follow the Prophet.5
The Mandaean table
Mandaeans may eat only meat that has been ritually slaughtered, and may not touch blood. Like their Jewish and Muslim neighbours they avoid the pig, the camel, the horse, the dog and the hare, but unlike them they consider it a crime to kill an ox or a buffalo, created, a Mandaean high priest told Drower, for ploughing and for milk. Scaleless fish are forbidden, and all food is washed in the river with the name of the Life pronounced over it. In practice little meat is eaten, and several Mandaeans told Drower that even lawful slaughter is a sin.6
The food of those given the scripture
The Qur’an sets the rule for how Muslims are to regard the food of their neighbours:
ٱلْيَوْمَ أُحِلَّ لَكُمُ ٱلطَّيِّبَـٰتُ ۖ وَطَعَامُ ٱلَّذِينَ أُوتُوا۟ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ حِلٌّ لَّكُمْ وَطَعَامُكُمْ حِلٌّ لَّهُمْ ۖ وَٱلْمُحْصَنَـٰتُ مِنَ ٱلْمُؤْمِنَـٰتِ وَٱلْمُحْصَنَـٰتُ مِنَ ٱلَّذِينَ أُوتُوا۟ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ مِن قَبْلِكُمْ إِذَآ ءَاتَيْتُمُوهُنَّ أُجُورَهُنَّ مُحْصِنِينَ غَيْرَ مُسَـٰفِحِينَ وَلَا مُتَّخِذِىٓ أَخْدَانٍ ۗ وَمَن يَكْفُرْ بِٱلْإِيمَـٰنِ فَقَدْ حَبِطَ عَمَلُهُۥ وَهُوَ فِى ٱلْـَٔاخِرَةِ مِنَ ٱلْخَـٰسِرِينَ ٥
This day [all] good foods have been made lawful, and the food of those who were given the Scripture is lawful for you and your food is lawful for them. And [lawful in marriage are] chaste women from among the believers and chaste women from among those who were given the Scripture before you, when you have given them their due compensation, desiring chastity, not unlawful sexual intercourse or taking [secret] lovers. And whoever denies the faith – his work has become worthless, and he, in the Hereafter, will be among the losers.
Qur’an 5:57
The verse makes the Muslim table open where the other laws close it. It declares the food of Jews and Christians lawful to Muslims, and Muslim food lawful to them, so that the rules of ḥalāl give Muslims and the People of the Book a shared table. The same verse permits marriage with their chaste women. In the Qur’an’s view the food laws of the Abrahamic family are branches of one law, and the verse treats the families that keep them as neighbours who may eat together.
Further reading: Religious law in the Abrahamic traditions, Prayer across the Abrahamic traditions, Mandaeism.