Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Carl W. Ernest, Words of Ecstasy in 

Sufism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 

1985); Rudolph Peters and Gert J. J. De Vries, “Apostasy 

in Islam.” Die Welt des Islams 17 (1976–1977): 1–25; 

Abdullah Saeed and Hassan Saeed, Freedom of Religion, 

Apostasy and Islam (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publish-

ing, 2004).

blood

 

(Arabic: 

dam)

The vital bodily fluid of blood has special sig-

nificance in the q

Uran

, and in Islamic practice it 

is the subject of ritual laws that are discussed at 

length in the 

sharia

.

The Quran regards blood as vital for human 

life, as reflected in its condemnation of killing as 

the shedding of blood (Q 2:30, 84). The Quran 

also gives special importance to the blood clot 

(alaq), which is considered the substance out of 

which God created humans. The chapter titled 

“Clots of Blood” (Q 96 al-Alaq) begins: “Recite 

in the name of your Lord who created—created 

man from clots of blood,” thus stressing the power 

of God in creating humans from such a humble 

substance. In other verses, the alaq is a particular 

stage in the development of the human (Q 22:5; 

Q 23:12–14). Some modern interpreters have 

compared these Quranic revelations to current 

medical understandings of the development of 

the human embryo and point to the similarities as 

proof that the Quran contains biological knowl-

edge unknown to humans until recent scientific 

discoveries.

Another indication of the importance of blood 

in the Quran is the prohibition against ingest-

ing it, which is mentioned four times, along 

with carrion, pork, and meat not consecrated in 

the name of God (Q 2:173; Q 5:3; Q 6:145; Q 

16:115). Because of this prohibition, all 

animals

to be consumed must be slaughtered by slitting 

their throats and draining the blood completely. 

This procedure must likewise be followed when 

animals are sacrificed, as in the annual Feast of 

Sacrifice, in which Muslims commemorate a

bra

-

ham

’s willingness to sacrifice his son upon God’s 

command. Though the Islamic version of the 

story of Abraham is similar to that in the Old Tes-

tament, Muslim scholars agree that the purpose