• Points derived from the ḥadith:

1 – Whatever is severed from an animal while it is alive takes the same ruling as the animal’s carcass with respect to purity or impurity and permissibility or prohibition. Thus, if a limb is cut from livestock or similar animals while they are still alive, that piece is impure and unlawful to eat. By contrast, if something is detached from a fish that remains alive, the detached part is pure and permissible.

2 – Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah said: “This is unanimously agreed upon by the scholars.”

3 – Exceptions:
• The musk pod removed from a musk-deer while the deer is still alive is pure by the Sunnah and by consensus, because whatever is detached from it is treated like an egg, a fetus, hair, and the like.
• Also excepted is the ṭarīdah: game that falls among a group of people who cannot perform the prescribed slaughter, so each of them hacks off a piece with his sword until the animal finally dies.
• The same applies to a stray camel and similar animals that have gone wild and cannot be captured for proper slaughter. The Companions used to do this during their expeditions. Al-Bukhārī reports from Rāfiʿ ibn Khadīj who said: “We were with the Prophet ﷺ at Dhul-Ḥulayfah when a camel bolted. The Companions pursued it but became exhausted. Then a man shot it with an arrow and Allah restrained it. The Prophet ﷺ said, ‘These beasts sometimes behave like the wild ones; when one bolts from you, treat it in this manner.’”

• Benefit:
  Ḥayāt al-Ḥayawān and the Arabic Encyclopedia summarise the following: The musk-deer is black in colour, with two protruding white canine teeth. A gland in its navel secretes blood at certain times of the year, causing it to fall ill; when the secretion is complete, the skin that forms the pouch drops off, and from it the finest perfume is produced. Al-Mutanabbī, praising Sayf al-Dawlah, said:

  If you surpass mankind though you are one of them,
  Remember: musk is but a portion of the deer’s own blood.