Why are haram things haram?

Haram things are haram because they don't go together with Islamic principles. Islamic principles are in turn, a way of life and good for us both morally and physically. This is best explained by examples. For example, Muslims arent allowed to drink. Why is that? If you look at the contents of alcoholic drinks, they are all made from things we are otherwise allowed to eat, like molasses, cane, grapes. But what we are prohibited from is the intoxication that it leads to. No one says drinking wine is haram, but because man is weak when it comes to self-control (which is why Muslims are also supposed to fast), and drinking alot leads to intoxication. So in essence, intoxication is haram. The reason intoxication is haram is because it makes a man a completely different person from what he is, and lulls him into doing things that he wouldn't normally do, and makes him do regrettable things. Another thing that is haram is eating anything that is not 'halal'. For many people, this just means checking if there is a 'halal' label on their packets of chicken and meat. But this is more than that. Lets just look at poultry for a while. We know halal chicken means chicken that has been in the direction of Makkah, is slaughtered with the butcher uttering a prayer that translates Allah is the Greatest of All, and that We Sacrifice this in the Name of Allah (please note that this is not the correct order, but means, in essence, the same thing) and the technique of slaughtering it is a different one. In this way, the animal is killed in a way that it suffers the most minimal amount of pain as is possible. That is the main component of anything called 'halal' and related to meat. Other things that you eat should also be halal, meaning that they are not slaughtered or offered to you in the the name of someone other than Allah. Halal also means that whatever you eat should have been made with sincerity, without the original producer or creator having cheated someone out of it, or acting unjustly with them. Of course, we cant be the judge of what is halal is such a way, but if you know that someone has bought you something which isn't originally theirs, or they have taken it forcefully from someone to give it to you, then too, it is haram, since it was rightfully someone else's.

I hope at least some of this has helped you.

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Haram also just means "something that is bad" in the easiest sense. It is an arabic Word, not just a islamic Word. Christian Arabs use it also.