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The words halal means lawful, allowed or permitted, and haram means unlawful, forbidden or prohibited, and cognate terms from the trilateral roots h-l-l and h-r-m respectively, most often designate these two categories and are of relatively frequent occurrence. The Koranic declaration of lawfulness or unlawfulness are limited to a relatively few areas of the law as later elaborated by the jurists. Apart from denoting lawfulness, the root h-l-l indicates an exit from the ritual state connected with the pilgrimage and re-entry into the profane state (idha halal-tun) (5:2). The most common means for indicating lawfulness in the Koran is to use the causative verb ahalla means to make lawful, usually with God as the subject: "He makes the good things lawful for them" (7:157), but it is sometimes passive (5:1) concerning certain livestock. In one instance it occurs in the first person plural, in an address to the Prophet (33:50). Very occasionally, people are made the subject of this verb, to suggest that they wrongly deem something lawful (9:37), though words derived from h-r-m are more common in such accusations. It should be noted that the intransitive verb halla (to be lawful) occasionally appears in the negative to indicate that something is not lawful (2:230), providing that one's wife ceases to be lawful after divorce. The Koran also employs the adjectives hill and halal to indicate lawfulness (5:5, 8:69) respectively about certain foods.

Words derived from the root h-r-m not only connote God's making something unlawful but also frequently express the idea of sacredness, such as al-shahr al-haram (the sacred month) (2:194) or al-haram (the sacred precinct, where the Kaba is located) (28:57); hurum (persons in the ritual state associated with pilgrimage) (5:1) and hurumat (sacred ordinances) (2:194, 22:30). The h-r-m derived counterpart to ahalla is the causative verb harrama (to make unlawful), and as in the case of the former, God is frequently its subject (2:173). The Koran does not employ an intransitive verb derived from h-r-m, making do instead with the passive of harrama (5:3), and the related passive participle (6:145), the corresponding participial form from ahalla is not found in the Koran. A number of passages use harrama in the first person plural and in most of these God recounts how He had previously made certain things, especially foods, unlawful for the Jews (4:160, 6:146, 16:118, 28:12). The counterpart of the adjective halal is haram, though they only appear together twice (10:59, 16:116). There is no h-r-m derived equivalent to the form hill but in 21:95, the Kufan tradition of variant readings substitutes the word hirm for haram. Later legal theorists paired hill with the non-Koranic term hurma, vide Fakhruddin Razi's Mahsul (1:15).

Certain other terms in the Koran also connote lawfulness and unlawfulness. A number of passages use the word junah (sin): “It is not a sin for you to…” (2:198) as an indirect means of describing lawful activities. Commentators gloss the word hijr as meaning haram in two passages. In 6:138, unnamed persons declare certain produce and livestock hijr, which means that it was declared haram in connection with a pagan rite, vide Tabari’s Tafsir (12:139-140). In 25:22, the phrase hijr mahjur appears in the following sentence: “On the day they see the angels, there will be no glad things then for the wrongdoers, and they will say hijran mahjuran.” The commentators attribute the phrase in question to the angels and gloss it as meaning haram muharram, that is, either paradise or the glad tidings will be strictly forbidden to the wrongdoers, vide Baidawi’s Anwar (2:37), and the word hijr appears alone in 89:5, where it is traditionally understood to mean intelligence. The word suht appears in 5:42 and twice at 5:62-3, always in the phrase “eaters/eating of suht” (akkaluna lil-suhti, aklihimu l-suhta), an apparently reference to the Jews.

What is halal and haram?

"The Koranic declaration of lawfulness and unlawfulness pertain mostly to ritual, dietary and family laws. For example, it declares (5:96) the hunting of land animals while in the ritual state for the pilgrimage to have been outlawed (hurima), but fishing and eating the catch lawful (uhilla). In regard to dietary matters, the most prominent and oft-repeated rule provides that God has made unlawful (harama) carrion, blood, swine flesh and what is consecrated to other than God (2:173, 16:115; and with slight variations at 5:3 and 6:145). The largest number of rules that use this rubric concern family law (4:22-4), for example, deals which women have been made unlawful (hurrimat) to marry and which lawful (uhilla). Another note-worthy principle of Islamic commercial law (2:275) provides that God made lawful (ahalla) sales transactions and forbade (harrama) usury.

In contrast to the many overtly legislative passages, which pronounce on lawfulness and unlawfulness, other passages employ the lawful/unlawful rubric to suggest that the Muslims are, perhaps, subject to fewer legal restrictions than previous communities. Several such passages use word derived from the root h-l-l and t-y-b to suggest that God has begun to expand the category of the lawful: “Today the good things (al-tayyibat) have been made lawful for you (uhilla lakum) (5:5; also vide 2:172-3) with h-r-m (5:4, 88; 7:157, 16:114). Other verses contain an implicit or explicit charge that certain human beings have mistakenly declared things lawful or unlawful. These fall into three main groups: those in which people are enjoined not to outlaw what God has provided (5:87, 6:140, 7:32, 10:59); those which generally complain that people have wrongly forbidden or made lawful unspecified things (6:148, 9:29, 16:35, 116; 66:1); and those in which people are accused of wrongly outlawing certain specified things, mostly in connection with pagan practices (6:138-50, 9:37).

Several passages use the lawful/unlawful rubric to suggest that the Jews laboured under a more burdensome law than the Muslims, either because the former created unnecessary rules (3:93) or because God wished to punish them (4:160, 6:146, 16:118). The process of repealing this more onerous law imposed on the Jews apparently begins with Jesus, who says in 3:50 that he has come as a confirmation of the Torah to make (li-uhilla) some of the thing, which had previously been forbidden (hurrima)."