An Account of a Family Without Its Butcher

There is the account of a family well enough off that every member — every brother, every sister — would typically stand and watch as a specially hired Muslim butcher came each year to slaughter their cows and sheep. One particular year the butcher did not come; he was unwell, or running late, and the animals stood waiting in the backyard with no one to do the work. The eldest brother refused outright: the sight of blood, he said, would make him faint, and he would not touch it. The next brother said he had never done it in his life either. The turn then came to another brother, a professor at the university, who likewise admitted he had never slaughtered so much as a chicken, still less a cow.^****** He asked himself whether the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) had ever slaughtered with his own hands: the answer was clearly yes — a cow, a sheep, a camel, a goat, every one of them — and he could see no reason why he should not follow this same sunnah himself. Knowing the sharīʿah's method, he tied three of the animal's legs, leaving the fourth free, since the animal will still kick a little, said Bismillāh, Allāhu akbar, and let the blood drain out properly — alḥamdulillāh, so nicely. The first attempt was difficult, but from that year on he slaughtered all the family's sheep himself, and it became easy. Doing it within the law, through a proper channel rather than privately at home, is what makes it both lawful and safe; unfamiliarity is no reason to think the act itself frightening or forbidden.