Chapter on Slaughtered Animals
Introduction
Linguistically, dhabḥ (slaughter) is the verbal noun of the verb “to slaughter an animal.” The animal that has been dispatched is called a dhabīḥ or madhbūḥ, while the act itself is a dhabīḥah; its plural is dhabāʾiḥ. It refers to every land animal whose throat-veins are severed.
In Islamic law it means to slaughter a land-dwelling animal that one is able to control and whose meat is lawful to eat—locusts excepted—by cutting both the trachea and the esophagus, or to dispatch an unrestrainable animal by ʿaqr (wounding it in whatever way brings it down).
The validity of slaughter is established by the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and the unanimous agreement of the scholars.
Allah the Exalted says: “except what you have properly slaughtered.”
Al-Dāraqutnī reports that the Prophet ﷺ sent Budayl ibn Waraqāʾ to call out in the valleys of Minā: “Know that the prescribed slaughter is in the throat and the upper part of the chest.”
Al-Bukhārī (5509) and Muslim (1968) record the ḥadīth of Rāfiʿ ibn Khadīj who said: “We were travelling with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ when a camel belonging to some people bolted. We had no horses with us, so a man shot it with an arrow and restrained it. The Prophet ﷺ said, ‘These beasts sometimes act like wild animals; when any of them does that, deal with it in this manner.’”
Ibn al-Munḏir said: “The scholars unanimously agree that if a person slaughters an animal that may lawfully be slaughtered, pronounces the name of Allah, severs the trachea and the two jugular veins, and lets the blood flow, that sheep is lawful to eat.”
The Vizier (Ibn Hubayrah), speaking about land animals, said: “They unanimously agree that whatever is lawful to eat becomes lawful only through proper slaughter, just as they unanimously agree that carrion is forbidden.”
Shaykh ʿAbd-Allah ibn Ḥumayd said: “The scholars agree that the place of slaughter is the throat and the upper part of the chest, and it is not permissible to slaughter elsewhere.”
The method of slaughter, sacrifice, and ʿaqr is identical in all the divinely revealed laws from