Question:
salam alaikum,
1. when animal is stunned by electro shock before slaughter, does it render the meat haram or not?
2. is there any opinion in Maliki school (strong or weak) that meat from western supermarket is permissible and what are its shurut?
Answer:
Alaykum Salam,
1. If the animal dies from the stun gun then its meat is haram; if it is stunned but still alive and then slaughtered then its meat is halal.
2. There is an opinion by Qadi Abu Bakr b. al-`Arabi in Ahkam al-Qur’an in the discussion of the verse 5:5 (Abd al-Qadir Ata ed. 2:45) . Its only shart is that those who prepared it be from Ahl al-Kitab and they consider it halal for themselves, because Allah Most High said {The food of the People of the Book is hereby lawful for you} and this is their food. His exact words were:
وَلَقَدْ سُئِلْت عَنْ النَّصْرَانِيِّ يَفْتِلُ عُنُقَ الدَّجَاجَةِ ثُمَّ يَطْبُخُهَا: هَلْ يُؤْكَلُ مَعَهُ أَوْ تُؤْخَذُ طَعَامًا مِنْهُ؟ وَهِيَ: الْمَسْأَلَةُ الثَّامِنَةُ: فَقُلْت: تُؤْكَلُ؛ لِأَنَّهَا طَعَامُهُ وَطَعَامُ أَحْبَارِهِ وَرُهْبَانِهِ، وَإِنْ لَمْ تَكُنْ هَذِهِ ذَكَاةً عِنْدَنَا، وَلَكِنَّ اللَّهَ تَعَالَى أَبَاحَ طَعَامَهُمْ مُطْلَقًا، وَكُلُّ مَا يَرَوْنَ فِي دِينِهِمْ فَإِنَّهُ حَلَالٌ لَنَا فِي دِينِنَا، إلَّا مَا كَذَّبَهُمْ اللَّهُ سُبْحَانَهُ فِيهِ.
However, he himself said only two pages earlier (Abd al-Qadir Ata ed. 2:43) that Christians consider swine halal but we cannot eat it as the Qur’an stated, so even if they consider it halal to eat an animal whose neck has been wrung (i.e. asphyxiated) or whose head has been smashed with a rock, we ourselves cannot eat it because it is carrion (mayta), as the Qur’an stated. His exact words were:
فَإِنْ قِيلَ: فَمَا أَكَلُوهُ عَلَى غَيْرِ وَجْهِ الذَّكَاةِ كَالْخَنْقِ وَحَطْمِ الرَّأْسِ؟ فَالْجَوَابُ: أَنَّ هَذِهِ مَيْتَةٌ، وَهِيَ حَرَامٌ بِالنَّصِّ، وَإِنْ أَكَلُوهَا فَلَا نَأْكُلُهَا نَحْنُ كَالْخِنْزِيرِ فَإِنَّهُ حَلَالٌ لَهُمْ، وَمِنْ طَعَامِهِمْ، وَهُوَ حَرَامٌ عَلَيْنَا، فَهَذِهِ أَمْثِلَةٌ وَاَللَّهُ أَعْلَمُ
Clearly (i) the two opinions contradict each other and (ii) the correct opinion on which everyone agrees is the second one.
There was an attempt by the Egyptian Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi in his best-selling book “al-Halal wal-Haram fil-Islam,” first published in Arabic in the 1960s then in English as “The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam” in the 1980s, to affirm that:
(i) stungun killing is the same as slaughtering and
(ii) there was no contradiction between the two opinions of Qadi Ibn al-`Arabi.
He was refuted on these two issues among others by the Moroccan Shaykh `Abd al-Hayy al-Ghumari in his 107-page fatwa “Hukm al-lahm al-mustawrad min Awrubba al-Nasraniyya” (The legal status of meat imported from Christian Europe).
Note: I heard Shaykh Muhammad al-Yaqubi (hafizahullah) say that he heard the Mufti of the Malikis and Hanafis in the Umawi Mosque in Damascus, his father Sayyid Ibrahim al-Yaqubi (rahimahullah) say when “al-Halal wal-Haram fil-Islam” first came out, that its author’s hand should be cut off for publishing such a book. Allah knows best.
Hajj Gibril Haddad
