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The saʾiba: an animal that they would release and leave completely unattended. It was not kept from pasture or water, nor was it ridden, milked, or even shorn of its hair.
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The wasila: a she-camel or ewe which, after producing a certain continuous number of offspring, they would slaughter for their idols, while forbidding its meat to women.
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The hami: a stallion camel whose back, they claimed, had become “protected” from being mounted. When the male had fathered a specified number of offspring, they would say, “His back is sacred,” and thereafter would not ride him.
These are practices of the Age of Ignorance that Islam came to abolish. At the opening of the sura Allah—exalted and majestic—says: “O you who believe, fulfil your contracts. Lawful for you are the animals of grazing livestock, except for that which is recited to you” (al-Maʾida 1).
Allah, glorified and exalted, has made livestock lawful for us so that we may eat from them, drink their milk, and ride them within the bounds prescribed by the Sharia—except for what is carrion or flowing blood. He says: “Forbidden to you are carrion, blood, swine flesh, that which has been dedicated to other than Allah, the strangled, the beaten, the fallen, the gored, that which a wild beast has eaten—except what you are able to slaughter— and that which has been sacrificed on stone altars” (al-Maʾida 3).
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Exegesis of Sura Hūd
Question: Allah the Most High says, “So as for those who are wretched, they will be in the Fire; for them therein is violent exhaling and inhaling, abiding therein as long as the heavens and the earth endure—except as your Lord wills. Indeed, your Lord does whatever He intends. And as for those who are blessed, they will be in Paradise, abiding therein as long as the heavens and the earth endure—except as your Lord wills, a gift without end” (Hūd 106–108). What is the meaning of these two verses? What is meant by the endurance of the heavens and the earth, and by the exception, ‘except as your Lord wills,’ that appears in both verses?