In the name of allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful What is sin in Islam?

2. Proper Slaughtering

The second condition is that only a slaughtered animal may lawfully be eaten of. It says in the Quran:

Forbidden unto you (for food) are carrion,... the strangled, and the dead through beating, and the dead through falling from a height, and that which has been killed by (the goring of) horns, and the devoured of wild beasts, saving that which you make lawful (by slaughtering)...."'

The verse plainly means that the only animal, which is not unclean, is the one which dies through proper slaughtering, and that in all cases where death takes place in some other way, the animal would be unclean. The word tazkiya (proper slaughtering) has not been explained in the Quran. Nor does knowledge of language help much in determining its meaning. Consequently we shall have to take recourse to the Sunnah. The Sunnah tells us that there are two forms of such slaughtering.

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  In a situation where the animal is out of our control (as for example when it is flying), or we have it under control but cannot for some reason properly slaughter it, we will be deemed to have slaughtered it if, with a sharp instrument, we inflict on it a wound which causes it to die through bleeding. "Spill blood by whatever instrument you choose," the Prophet says, stating the rules for this kind of slaughtering.
  
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  In a situation where we have complete control of the animal and might slaughter it the way we like, regular slaughtering will be necessary. According to the Sunnah, an animal like the camel should be slaughtered by piercing its throat with a sharp, spear-like instrument so that blood streams out and the bleeding ultimately makes the animal fall. Lifeless to the ground. This was a well-known method of slaughtering camels in Arabia and mention of it is made in the Quran.' The Sunnah tells us that it was also the method employed by the Prophet for slaughtering the camel.
  

As for slaughtering the cow, goat, or the like animals, the traditions of the Prophet contain the following directions:

1. 
   Abu Huraria transmits that, on the eve of Hajj, the Prophet dispatched Budail bin Warqa Khuza'i on an ashy camel to proclaim along the mountain passes of Mina that the animal should be slaughtered at some point from just below the glottis to the root of the neck, and that the animal should not be made to perish hastily."
   
2. 
   Ibn Abbas transmits that the Prophet forbade the cutting of the spinal cord of the animal when it is slaughtered.'"
   
3. 
   There is a mursal' tradition, related by Imam Muhammad from Saeed bin Al-Musayyab, which says: "The Prophet forbade the cutting of the spinal cord of the goat at the time of slaughtering it."
   

In view of these traditions and the established practice of the times of the Prophet and the Companions, it is held by the Hanifites, the Shafi’ites and the Hanbalites that in slaughtering an animal, its throat and esophagus must be cut.

According to the Malikites, the throat and the two jugular veins should be cut.'

In all these forms of slaughtering, which have been described in the Sunnah in explication of the Quranic injunction, the animal does not die at once; the link between its body and mind is retained till the last moment. As it tosses and turns, blood from every part of its body is drawn out and only the outflow of blood causes its death.

Now, since the Quran has not elaborated its own injunction, and the Prophet is known to have elucidated it in the above-noted manner, it will have to be conceded that the words "except that which you slaughter" imply the same kind of slaughtering as explained by the Prophet, and that the animal which is killed in disregard of this is unclean.

The Quran mentions still another method of killing an' animal, namely, killing with a trained hunting beast provided the beast keeps from eating of the game. In this case the animal will be taken as slaughtered even if it has been ripped up by the hunting beast.
And those beasts and birds of prey which you have trained as hounds are trained, you teach them that which Allah taught you; so eat of that which they catch for you....'

The Prophet explains this as follows:

"...And if it catches anything for you and you come up to it while it is still alive cut its throat; if you come up to it when the dog has killed it but not eaten any of it eat it."

"...But if it has eaten any of it do not eat, for. It has caught it only for itself."

"And that which you hunt with your dog and, finding it alive, slaughter, you may eat."

The conclusion is that when a hunting beast makes a kill for its owner, the Quranic condition for slaughtering is satisfied. Such killing, therefore, does not fall under "that which the beasts have eaten of" -which is unclean -but under the exception of "that which you slaughter". But the Quran sites this law only in regard to the trained hunting beast. The Prophet counts out that beast also which is kept as a pet but not trained to hunt. Therefore, it cannot be argued that it is permissible to eat the flesh of an animal, which has been tom up by some beast other than the hunting kind. The tradition, which allows the eating of game when it is captured alive and slaughtered, definitively lays down that an animal, which is dead through any means other than slaughtering, is to be treated as carrion.