– Dhakāh (ritual slaughter): also called tadhkiyah and is equivalent to dhabḥ (cutting the throat) or naḥr (piercing at the base of the neck). Ibn al-Jawzī said, “In Arabic, dhakāh denotes the completion of a thing.”
– Al-janīn (the fetus): the offspring so long as it remains in its mother’s womb; it is so named because it is hidden from sight.
Derivations from the ḥadith
1 – The report shows that when a fetus is removed from its mother’s womb dead after she has been duly slaughtered, it is lawful to eat, and the mother’s slaughter suffices for it. The slaughter has encompassed every part of the mother, and at the moment of slaughter the fetus counted as one of those parts; the individual parts of a slaughtered animal do not each require a separate act of slaughter. This is a manifest, clear analogy (qiyās jallī). It is the position of the majority of scholars, including the three imams: Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Aḥmad.
2 – Abū Ḥanīfah, however, held that the fetus is not rendered lawful by the slaughter of its mother. Ibn al-Munḏir said, “No report from any Companion or scholar requires a fresh act of slaughter for the fetus—apart from what is related from Abū Ḥanīfah. People have always deemed it permissible, and we know of no one who opposed them.” Ibn Rushd wrote in Bidāyat al-Mujtahid: “The reason for their disagreement is their dispute over the authenticity of the transmitted report together with its apparent contradiction of foundational principles; for if the fetus were alive and then died with its mother, it would have died by strangulation, placing it among the strangled animals whose consumption is forbidden.”
3 – If the fetus emerges with stable, independent life: the commentary on al-Iqnāʿ states that when a fetus displays viable life, it is only permissible after it has been slaughtered or pierced, for it is now another living being, independent in its life. Ibn al-Munḏir said, “They are unanimous that if the fetus comes out alive in a state in which the like of it normally survives, it is only lawful after slaughter.”