except what you have ritually slaughtered. This phrase is an exception to the foregoing list—namely, if you reach any of these animals – the strangled (al-munkhaniqah), the beaten (al-mawqūdhah), the fallen (al-mutaraddiyah), the gored (an-naṭīḥah), or one mauled by a beast of prey – while it is still alive with stable life and you perform the prescribed Islamic slaughter, then it becomes lawful to eat, for the conditions of permissibility have been fulfilled.
If, however, you find it already dead as a result of the injury, or you find it alive but only in its final, unsteady throes—the spasmodic motions typical of an animal whose throat has already been cut—then it remains unlawful. Some scholars do allow consumption when even the slightest life remains and the animal is subsequently slaughtered, but the majority hold that where the life is unstable, like the twitching of a slaughtered beast, the subsequent slaughter does not render it lawful, for in effect it is already a carcass.
“And whatever is sacrificed on stone altars.” The term nuṣub refers to the stones venerated by the people of pre-Islamic ignorance; they would smear them with the blood of their offerings in reverence and devotion, and some would slaughter the animal directly upon those stones. Such offerings are acts of polytheism, and the meat of animals slaughtered in honor of the nuṣub is therefore forbidden. The verse is clarifying a practice that prevailed in the Days of Ignorance.
Regarding the remainder of your question about animals from the strangled, the beaten, the fallen, and the like, we have already explained that if you reach one while it still possesses stable life and then slaughter it, the meat is lawful. If you reach it dead, or in its final convulsions akin to the death-throes of a slaughtered animal, this is a matter of scholarly disagreement, and the majority declare it unlawful.
Accordingly, an animal encountered after it has been injured falls into three categories:
- You reach it when it is already dead; this is forbidden by unanimous agreement.