as a disconnected exception. Yet the correct position is that, whatever one decides about the nature of the exception, dhakāh must still be operative with respect to these animals. For if the prohibition mentioned in the verse attaches to the five categories only after they have died, then so long as they are alive they—as well as all other animals—necessarily fall under the rules of slaughter; while living they are no different from any other creature in that they can become lawful through dhakāh, the very death caused by it being what makes them permissible to eat.

If, on the other hand, we say that the exception is connected, the obligation is even more obvious.

It might also be argued that the general prohibition could be understood as covering the very bodies of these five animals both before and after death, just as is the case with the pig, for which dhakāh has no effect. On this reading, the exception would lift the ban on their actual bodies by explicitly affirming the efficacy of slaughter in their regard. If that is accepted, the objection raised by the critic who sought to prove the exception disconnected would no longer stand.

As for those who distinguish between an animal whose vital organs have been pierced and one whose condition is merely doubtful, it could be said that they regard the exception as disconnected; the efficacy of dhakāh in the hopeful case is allowed only by consensus, and the doubtful case is then analogised to it.

Alternatively, one might say that the exception is connected, yet the exclusion of this particular kind from the category of the beaten animal (al-mauqūdhah) is established by analogy: dhakāh is meant to take effect only when it is certain to be the cause of death. If there is doubt whether death came about through slaughter, the blow, the goring, or something else, dhakāh should not be deemed effective. This is precisely the situation of an animal whose vital organs have been pierced; it may be treated as carrion, for a condition of valid slaughter is that it terminate life that still subsists, not life that is already departing.

Second Issue
Do acts of dhakāh carried out on animals whose meat is forbidden nonetheless purify their hides?

Here too the jurists disagreed. Mālik held that dhakāh is effective for beasts of prey and the like—everything except the pig—and Abū Ḥanīfah said the same, though their school differs over whether such predators are strictly unlawful or merely disliked, as will be discussed in the Book of Food and Drink.

Al-Shāfiʿī maintained that dhakāh is effective for every animal whose flesh is forbidden to eat; hence it is permissible to sell and make use of all their parts save the meat itself.

The root of the disagreement is whether every part of an animal follows the flesh in being lawful or unlawful. Those who say that all parts follow the flesh argue that if dhakāh does not render the meat lawful, it cannot render anything else lawful either. Those who deny such dependence contend that even though dhakāh does not affect the meat, it still affects the rest of the animal’s parts. The default, they say, is that slaughter works in all components; when its effect on the flesh is negated by evidence declaring the meat forbidden, its effect in the other parts remains unless a further proof removes it as well.