The Price of Thinking — Remembering Dr. Diaa Alawady

They are excluded because they refuse to be integrated into a system, or even stripped of their most basic rights when they do not cooperate, do not participate, or simply cannot conform to certain social rules because they challenge and overturn them. Today, we have found countless names to define them, often before we have even truly understood them. We classify them, separate them, place them on alternative pathways, as long as they remain, somehow, within the system. And those who cannot remain within it are expelled.

Meanwhile, people continue to work relentlessly until they become ill, and when the body finally presents its bill, they are forced to fight even for the most basic compensation. It is an orchestra in which a few conduct and the vast majority perform. Some know the score perfectly well; others simply do what they see everyone else doing.

One imitates another, incapable of taking a stand, because taking a stand means assuming responsibility. It is easier to obey.

And so even healthy people can be harmed, needs that never existed before can be created, and enormous costs can be generated simply to keep those who remain on the carousel moving.

But few see it.

And yet I believe that a reckoning will come for those who deliberately commit evil. A reckoning before God, even when human justice never arrives. A reckoning for Israel and for every other power or government responsible for injustices against innocent people; a reckoning for every tyrant on this planet and for those who, despite having the ability to speak, choose to look the other way.

Today, even words have become instruments of power. “Terrorist,” “extremist,” “conspiracy theorist,” “misfit”: a single word can be enough to determine who deserves to be heard and who may be excluded.

The Israeli–Palestinian question is a dramatic example of this. Hamas is designated a terrorist organisation by numerous states; others interpret at least part of the conflict through the Palestinian right to resist occupation. But this very opposition should compel us to ask a deeper question: who possesses the power to construct the categories through which millions of people will interpret reality?

Because the problem is not confined to the East; it is ancient and universal.

It is called power.

Power over others, over information, over the economy, over bodies, and even over the definition of what we consider normal.

Food, too, is not separate from this mechanism. In fact, nutrition exerts an enormous influence on our cerebral and physical functioning. What we eat does not merely fill our stomachs: it provides the substances with which the body builds and maintains cells, hormones, and biological structures, and it participates in the metabolic processes upon which energy and the functioning of the nervous system depend. To speak about nutrition, therefore, inevitably means speaking about both mind and body.

And so a question arises that I consider unavoidable: who decided what the everyday diet of the masses would become?

Because we, as individuals, did not build the food system into which we were born. We found supermarkets already full, intensive farming already established, industrial products already normalised, and particular eating habits already transformed into customs. From childhood, we learned what “breakfast” was supposed to be, what we were supposed to eat for lunch, which foods were considered necessary, and which ones were expected to appear on our tables every day. Rarely did we ask who had constructed that normality, but someone finally challenged it. His name was Dr. Diaa Al Awady, an Egyptian physician who challenged dominant conceptions of nutrition by proposing a return to the Qur’anic principle of al-ṭayyibāt.

And here the issue becomes even more unsettling: if nutrition can influence the functioning of the body and brain, controlling the food system means possessing, at least indirectly, enormous power over the conditions in which a population lives.

I cannot scientifically demonstrate that someone deliberately designed the modern diet with the intention of keeping us inert. To present that as fact would be to replace research with suspicion. But I can ask a question: what kind of human being is produced by a system that makes industrial food cheap, immediate, and omnipresent, while turning nourishment into an act increasingly detached from nature and awareness?

The question becomes even more legitimate when we consider that scientific research does not regard the modern diet as neutral at all. A large umbrella review of meta-analyses encompassing nearly ten million people found associations between greater exposure to ultra-processed foods and numerous adverse outcomes, including type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular mortality, depression, and common mental health disorders. Much of this evidence remains observational and varies in quality, meaning that not every association can legitimately be transformed into causation; nevertheless, it demonstrates how naïve it is to imagine that what we eat is irrelevant to what we become.

A systematic review published in 2026 reached an equally interesting conclusion regarding the brain: the majority of the studies included associated greater consumption of ultra-processed foods with poorer outcomes in memory, executive function, or general cognition. The researchers themselves cautioned that further experimental studies are needed to establish causal relationships with certainty.

And this is precisely where the paradox emerges.

A society needs productive individuals, but the market needs, above all, consumers. People who are perpetually hungry for something: food, possessions, entertainment, pharmaceuticals, stimulation, approval. There is no need to imagine a secret room in which someone deliberately designed all of this. Something even more unsettling is possible: an economic system may spontaneously come to reward whatever sells the most, costs the least, creates habits, and keeps consumption in motion, regardless of what makes human beings more lucid, autonomous, or conscious.

Perhaps, then, no one ever had to make an explicit decision to keep us inert.

It was enough to construct a world in which whatever encourages consumption is continuously rewarded, while whatever requires discipline, time, awareness, and restraint becomes increasingly difficult.

And this is where the Qur’anic concept of ṭayyib returns.

Because the Qur’an does not simply invite human beings to consume whatever is placed before them. It obliges them to distinguish, to question, and not to turn desire into the measure of what is good.

True dietary freedom does not consist in having fifty different products on a supermarket shelf. It consists in knowing why we are eating them, in selecting them consciously, and in not filling our stomachs when we are not hungry. And it is precisely here that Dr. Diaa Al Awady may well have been more than right.

From childhood, we are taught that certain foods “are good for us,” almost as though these were definitive truths. Chicken, eggs, vegetables: categories repeated so frequently that they have become almost synonymous with healthy eating.

But science, when read without reducing it to a slogan, is far more complex.

Take eggs.

An egg has, first and foremost, a biological function: it belongs to the reproductive system of the hen. This, of course, does not prove that it is unsuitable for human consumption. But it should at least remind us that nature does not produce food according to the categories of our supermarkets.

Nor does the scientific literature allow us simply to state that “eggs are good for you.”

Eggs contain protein and numerous micronutrients, but clinical studies also show that their consumption can increase LDL cholesterol under certain conditions. Epidemiological studies examining the relationship between egg consumption, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and mortality have produced results that are not always consistent.

The correct conclusion, therefore, is not that eggs are necessarily harmful.

But neither is it that they are necessarily beneficial.

Above all, there is no universal scientific necessity to consume them in order to be healthy.

The same applies to chicken.

It is a source of protein and micronutrients, but that does not mean that consuming it automatically produces health. Much of the evidence concerning its long-term effects comes from observational studies, while experimental studies capable of demonstrating long-term clinical benefits are far more limited. Some large epidemiological analyses have also observed associations between higher poultry consumption and certain metabolic outcomes, including type 2 diabetes, although a statistical association does not prove that chicken itself caused the disease.

And it is precisely here that my question arises: when did we transform “it can be consumed” into “it is good for you”?

And who transformed that conclusion into a collective certainty?

I do not want to replace one dogma with another. It would be intellectually dishonest to claim that science has demonstrated that chicken and eggs are poisons. It has not.

But neither has it demonstrated that they are indispensable to human health.

This distinction is fundamental, particularly within the Islamic conception of food, which many mistakenly reduce to a simple black-and-white dichotomy: ḥalāl or ḥarām, permitted or forbidden. In reality, the Islamic legal tradition recognises many more nuances: farḍ/wājib, that which is obligatory; mustaḥabb/mandūb, that which is recommended; mubāḥ, that which is simply permissible; makrūh, that which is discouraged; and ḥarām, that which is forbidden. Alongside these categories stands an even deeper Qur’anic distinction: that between ṭayyib, what is good, pure, and wholesome, and khabīth, what is bad, impure, or corrupt. It is here that black and white dissolve: not everything that is permissible must necessarily be desirable in every quantity, circumstance, or condition. Islam does not merely teach us to ask, “May I eat this?”; it opens the door to a much deeper question: “Is this truly good for me?” And it is precisely in the nuances between these two questions that discernment begins.

This distinction is fundamental.

The same applies to the plant world. Human beings can digest and utilise many plant foods, but not every component of them is directly digested by our enzymes. Cellulose, for example, is not digested by the human body in the same way as other carbohydrates. Specialised herbivores possess entirely different adaptations: the cow is a ruminant and possesses a complex microbial ecosystem that enables it to derive nourishment from plant matter in a way that we cannot replicate.

This does not demonstrate that vegetables are harmful, but it does demonstrate something more interesting: “natural,” “plant-based,” and “healthy” are not scientific synonyms.

Every food should be evaluated according to physiology, quantity, preparation, metabolic context, and the characteristics of the individual—not according to slogans.

And yet we live in the age of mass food production.

Chickens raised in immense numbers, eggs produced on an industrial scale, intensive agriculture, ultra-processed foods available twenty-four hours a day.

At the same time, industrialised societies live with obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease.

It would be scientifically incorrect to claim that chicken, eggs, or vegetables are simply the cause. Metabolic diseases are multifactorial.

But it would be equally unintelligent to stop questioning the food system we have constructed.

This is where, for me, the Qur’anic concept of ṭayyib becomes particularly significant.

It is not enough to ask whether something is ḥalāl, permissible.

We must ask whether it is also ṭayyib: good, pure, wholesome, and sound.

It is a radically different question from the one asked by the market.

The market asks: can we sell it?

The human being should ask: what am I putting into my body? Where does it come from? How was it produced? Why am I eating it? And who benefits from the fact that I continue to consume it?

The same obsession with classification returns in childhood.

A generation of apparently “maladjusted” children emerges, and we immediately feel the need to give them a name, through a syndrome, a disorder, a category and—before too long—a code.

Neurological and psychiatric disorders do, of course, genuinely exist, and for many people diagnoses and therapies provide essential help. To deny this would be irresponsible.

But acknowledging this does not mean abandoning another question:

are we always treating an illness, or are we sometimes medicalising a difference?

Because an economy inevitably exists around illness as well. The pharmaceutical industry produces indispensable medicines and saves lives, but it nevertheless remains an industry with enormous economic interests. Both realities can be true at the same time.

And it is precisely this ability to hold two thoughts simultaneously that we are losing. Criticising medicine does not mean rejecting medicine, and criticising the food industry does not mean claiming that every industrially produced food is poisonous, just as criticising a government does not mean hating a people. It simply means refusing to stop thinking.

Perhaps this is also why the Qur’an remains profoundly uncomfortable for a society built around limitless desire. It prohibits or condemns precisely those things around which enormous economic interests revolve: alcohol, drugs, prostitution, usury, corruption, gambling, and exploitation.

And here lies the paradox: we treat the consequences, but rarely eliminate the causes. We treat addiction while continuing to sell what fuels it; we fight indebtedness while prospering from interest; we denounce exploitation while the body remains a commodity. And those who attempt to trace these problems back to their causes are often delegitimised, marginalised, or excluded from the debate. In more controversial cases, such as that of Dr. Diaa Alawady, even a sudden death may raise questions about the possibility of conflicting interests—questions which, in the absence of verifiable evidence of external involvement, must nevertheless remain distinct from an allegation of murder.

The Egyptian case is emblematic. Following the spread of Dr. Diaa Alawady’s Al-Tayyibāt dietary system, which called for the elimination of chicken and eggs, the market recorded a sharp fall in prices in 2026: at least 20% for poultry and more than 50% for eggs. Some industry representatives openly linked the phenomenon to declining consumption brought about by the growing popularity of Al-Tayyibāt; others attributed it instead to increased production. The cause therefore remains disputed, but one thing is certain: when thousands of people begin to question what they consume, a simple idea can become an economic force. And when an idea begins to affect the market, it suddenly ceases to be merely an idea.

Perhaps this is precisely where the most superficial form of freedom ends and the more difficult one begins: the freedom to question what is presented to us as normal, even when the answer is economically inconvenient.