When you say everything is created with a purpose, it is not necessary that you read the purpose immediately and distinctly in every individual species. Now this is a large order of mammals to which pig belongs. Now for anyone to claim that we know the purpose of every species of mammal is a very tall claim to say the least, but once you enter the order of insects, what then? There are millions of insects and to begin to discuss individual benefits of each insect and where they stand in the ecology, it’s a very very difficult thing to do, you know.
So to understand the general scheme of things is quite enough and when you look generally and observe things from a higher horizon, then you will come to know that everything which is created has some ultimate purpose and benefit. Now I mentioned one word, ecology. This subject is now getting more and more popular in America and they are paying greater stress to this now than ever before and through the study of ecology they have come out with a very ingenious way of finding the usability or the benefit of an insect which could not be understood otherwise.
To keep the balance in system, certain things are created and unless you understand the wider scheme of things, you cannot understand what part they play in keeping that balance. For example, certain bacteria in ocean, certain types of life in ocean, serve the purpose of keeping the balance of oxygen and certain others the purpose of keeping the balance of carbon dioxide and the same thing happens on the surface. Now directly you could not read any meaning to the existence of many species of life on earth or underwater but when you look at it from a higher horizon, at a bigger horizon, from a higher vantage point, then you begin to understand that nothing is in vain.
Now you look, go back to the time of dinosaurs. Huge dinosaurs were created once, as high as a three-story building and as large and they got suddenly destroyed ultimately and nobody knows why they came and where they went at least a few decades ago, till a few decades ago nobody knew this but now the scientists have come to know that this oil which we are using is the decayed form of those dinosaurs. They got killed in large number and the organic material was buried deep in earth at places which are closer to sea and due to influences, various influences, they need not to be counted here, ultimately all the dead bodies of dinosaurs which were huge and so many, they almost filled the whole surface of earth.
They ultimately decayed into oil and that oil was preserved for you and I to use in this modern age. So go back in time and look at a billion years before or two billion years before and then you’ll be surprised to learn that when nobody was to observe why, even then things were created without, not without purpose but for a purpose, with a purpose which was applicable to billions years beyond that time. So when the scan is so big, when the canvas is so large, how can a tiny man even claim to understand the purpose of each species and both in the present, in the context of present time and in the context of the past and the future? I mean it’s something beyond me at least. Exactly. No, I shouldn’t say that. It was, again if you’ll have to go back in time and find out which man. It is possible that if a man is refined in taste and this is an ordinary observation, things which he liked previously he would reject later on.
As you are refining and improving in taste, things which earlier had some attraction for you would lose attraction for you anymore. Why? Because you have advanced while that thing stayed where it was, so it was left behind. When you are becoming richer and richer, traveling from its state of poverty, you change your way of life. Things which interested you earlier have no more interest for you and they are left behind in time. So on a larger scale it is just possible that there was a time when man was not so refined as to be further developed by Allah in a special manner and for him to eat pig was just no crime. It was just ordinary thing for him. Like even today people eat monkeys and dogs, those who have been not, I mean chosen by Allah for a special guidance so far or who are still sticking to religions of say four thousand years ago, for example Chinese, they’re sticking to Confucianism which is left far behind and the teaching which was good and sufficient for that time is no longer good and sufficient and in that teaching dog was not forbidden.
So every civilization in which religion does not forbid dog to be eaten, they of their own accord have left eating dog because they have developed insensibilities. But still they are people, it does not hurt them any to eat dogs. Only the other day a friend of mine was telling me an incident which did take place, it was not a joke, a Pakistani boy once visited Hong Kong or some such place and he was warned that they eat strange things there so be careful to warn them that you will not eat this and you will not eat that. So he told the bearer that I will not eat pig, I will not eat any part of pig or any form of pig and I’ll not eat monkeys and donkeys and insects and snakes and everything.
He forgot just one word and that night when he ate, the whole night he could not sleep, he felt so hot and warm and he drank water after water and he took cold showers and still he could not go to sleep and in the morning he asked that bearer what had he given him, he said dog of course. So he had eaten dog, the one name he had forgotten to mention. So dog is not as we see it today, it does not seem to have been created for the purpose of eating. But previously when there were many, dogs used to eat dogs and other animals also and the sub-human level of humanity also made use of dogs. So you have to go back in time and travel ahead and then try to find out where something is adjusted. So the answer to such questions cannot be very short and narrow, it requires a wider glance over a bigger horizon.
