I’ve never understood this business about some types of food being religiously off limits.
If one of these religions was against eating liver I might understand.
Islam built on that and added their own spins, like Halal food.
The Bible (”Tanach”) states that G-d forbids these foods as they are considered “unfit”, “unclean” or, in other words, not “Kosher” which means “fit” (to consume). It's all about G-d commandments.
Islam calls their dietary laws “Halal”.
Whatever the Jews did, the Muslims pushed it to the extreme.
For example, Jews are commanded to pray 3 times a day, the Muslims upped the ante to 5 times a day. Jews fast for one day on Yom Kippur. The Muslims fast for a friggin’ month during Ramadan. It's like taking extreme behavior and making it more severe.
Food is considered a way of the human restraining his/her animal instincts to devour what is on the plate immediately. Religions pull the reigns in and say whoaa, say a little prayer thanking G-d before you pop that bit of food into your gullet...
Figs are apparently not to be eaten by Christians. Good excuse to pass on the Fig Newtons.
At least the Jewish one about pigs and shrimp kinda makes sense that they’re scavengers that eat human remains. Pigs were used to clean battlefields of dead bodies.
Those wacky ancient Egyptian were against eating catfish (the African variety that delivers an electrical shock) because they supposedly ate their sun god’s wiener.
A lot of ancient dietary laws make sense as basic sanitation practice in hot climates without refrigeration. But write anything down, no matter how simple and common sense, and you can be sure an industry will arise to interpret and embellish. It's the nature of bureaucracy.