Essays

Sometimes, the way that Islamic rulings are presented will depend on the language that they are written in. Here’s a fun example:

In the English translation of Sayyid Sistani’s rulings, we find the ruling: “Dogs and pigs are impure” [Source]. This ruling is simple, to the point, and clear.

In the Persian edition of Sayyid Sistani’s rulings, however, from which the English rulings are extracted and translated, the wording of the same ruling states: “Dogs and pigs that live on land are impure” (emphasis mine) [Source]. 

Wait. Why did it have to specify the ones that live on land? Why did the English translation omit this key point? What kind of dogs and pigs don’t live on land, anyway?

It turns out that, in the Persian language, the phrases that literally translate into English as “sea dog” and “sea pig” are used to refer to the animals that, in English, we know of as “seals” and “walruses” (By the way, we have something similar in English, too: sea horses!).

Now, if the Persian-language ruling said that all animals known as dogs and pigs are impure, then that would mean seals and walruses would be included. So, in order to distinguish between the kind of dogs and pigs that truly are impure and the ones that are not (i.e. the seals and walruses), in Persian, the clarifier “that live on land” (as opposed to the sea) becomes necessary.

Fun, right? Now let’s take a look at another example of a language-specific ruling, one with some interesting consequences. This case is a little more involved, so we will need a little bit of background first…