The fourth issue:
If the slaughter-organs are cut from the rear of the neck, the Mālikī school is unanimous that such a slaughter is invalid. This is likewise the view of Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib, Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī, and others. Al-Shāfiʿī, Abū Ḥanīfah, Isḥāq, and Abū Thawr, however, deemed it permissible, and the same has been reported from Ibn ʿUmar, ʿAlī, and ʿImrān ibn Ḥuṣayn.

The point of divergence is whether a lawful slaughter can take effect on an animal that has already sustained a mortal wound. Whoever severs the slaughter-passages from the nape cannot reach them except after cutting the spinal cord, and the spinal cord is one of the vital points whose rupture is fatal. Thus the act of slaughter would be carried out on an animal already fatally wounded—a matter whose underlying debate has been discussed earlier.

The fifth issue:
If the slaughterer continues cutting until he severs the spinal cord, Mālik regarded this as reprehensible when the extension of the cut was not intended from the outset; for should he intend it from the beginning, it would be as though he had deliberately chosen a form of slaughter that is not sanctioned. Mutarrif and Ibn al-Mājishūn ruled that the meat may not be eaten when the spinal cord is cut deliberately and knowingly, but may be eaten if it is cut inadvertently or out of ignorance.

The sixth issue:
Is it a condition of lawful slaughter that it be performed in a single, uninterrupted motion? The school agrees that it is indeed a condition, and that if the slaughterer lifts his hand before completing the cut and then returns it after a noticeable pause, the slaughter is invalid. They differed, however, when he returns his hand immediately, with no real break. Ibn Ḥabīb said that if he resumes at once, the animal may be eaten. Sahnūn said it may not be eaten. It has also been said that if he lifted his hand merely to ascertain whether the slaughter was complete, and, finding that it was not, resumed the cut without delay, then the meat is lawful; this is one interpretation of Sahnūn’s position, which has also been taken to indicate dislike rather than outright prohibition.

Abū al-Ḥasan al-Lakhmī remarked: “Were the opposite view adopted it would be sounder—namely, that if he lifted his hand thinking the slaughter complete, then discovered otherwise and immediately resumed, the meat would be lawful. The first case was done in doubt, the second on what he took for certainty.” This reasoning is built on the premise that cutting all the slaughter-passages is a requisite; therefore, if he lifts his hand before finishing, the animal becomes fatally wounded without proper slaughter, and resuming the cut cannot alter that status, for it is as though the slaughter were attempted on an already mortally stricken animal.

[Chapter Three: The instruments with which slaughter is performed]
The scholars unanimously agree that any tool—iron, stone, wood, or reed—that causes the blood to flow and severs the jugulars may be used for lawful slaughter.
They differed over three materials: teeth, claws, and bone. Some allowed slaughter with bone but forbade it with teeth and claws; among those who forbade teeth and claws, some distinguished between whether they were detached or still attached, permitting their use if detached but not if still connected. Others held that slaughter with teeth and bone is merely disliked, not prohibited.
Within the Mālikī school there is no disagreement that slaughter with bone is permissible so long as it causes the blood to flow. Concerning teeth and claws, the three well-known opinions remain: absolute prohibition; a distinction between detached and attached; and declaring it disliked but not forbidden.