A recipe and the rules of slaughter

This lesson asks you to adapt recipes to specific dietary needs, such as religious dietary practices. The museum explains what one legal tradition requires for the flesh of a land animal to be lawful to eat; the cooking, the substitutions and the tasting are your class's. ¹

Take a recipe your class cooks and mark every ingredient that comes from an animal. For each, write what you would need to know about its slaughter, and what you could substitute.

Read how the Kuwaiti encyclopaedia of jurisprudence sorts the ways an animal may become lawful food. In the record of slaughter, the chosen dhaka is slaughter (cutting the throat) for most animals, and the lower-neck cut for the camel in the majority view ^{2 3 4 5}. The forced dhaka is a wound in any part of the body when the animal cannot be caught, called 'aqr ^{4 5}. A fetus taken from a slaughtered mother follows her dhaka, and the rule depends on whether it comes out alive or dead ^{6 7}. The record of tadhkiya adds that fish and locusts are lawful without tadhkiya, since they are not of the kind slaughtered ⁸. This is what the jurists say about when the flesh of an animal is lawful to eat, not a description of any method of work.

The two records give points where the jurists differ on who slaughters and on what needs dhaka. The jurists require that the one who slaughters be a Muslim or a People of the Book; the Hanafis, Malikis and Hanbalis, and one view of the Shafi'is, require him to be discerning, able to understand naming God and slaughter, while the sounder Shafi'i view does not ^{8 9}. The schools differ over the slaughter of a People of the Book, a Magian, an apostate and a child of mixed parents; the majority make the slaughter of the People of the Book lawful unless it was offered to other than God ^{10 11 12 13}. The Malikis hold that animals without flowing blood need dhaka, while the majority do not require it for fish and locusts ¹⁴. The record gives each position with its holders, and the museum decides nothing between them.

The record of slaughter rests on one source, the Kuwaiti encyclopaedia of jurisprudence, which gives the jurists' terms and names the school that holds each position ¹⁵. The record lists conditions for a valid slaughter ^{16 10 17 18} and says the schools differ on some of them, without giving each school's reasons. Neither record describes an inspection or certification practice, or gives an academic account of slaughter. They witness what the jurists hold, not how any slaughter is carried out or checked today.

The record names five conditions for a valid slaughter: a living animal, a death that comes from the cut, an animal that is not game of the sanctuary, a slaughterer who is sane and a Muslim or a People of the Book, and a blade that cuts ^{16 10 17 18}, and says the schools differ over the slaughter of a People of the Book and others ¹⁰. Which of these conditions does the record give with no stated disagreement, which does it give with one, and why does the difference matter to a researcher who writes about "the rule" of slaughter?

• Slaughter (dhaba'ih): the kinds of dhaka, the conditions of a valid slaughter and the points on which the schools differ.
• Tadhkiya: its definition, its kinds, and the conditions on the slaughterer and the instrument.
• The lawful, the unlawful and the doubtful: Ibn Rajab's division, which names carrion among the purely unlawful.

Read slaughter in fiqh. Pick a recipe with meat, list the conditions the text gives for a valid slaughter, and rewrite the recipe's ingredient list so that each meat item says what must be confirmed.