The Two Exceptions: A Witnessed Wrong Invocation, and a Witnessed Strangling

This much established, however, is not to say the matter is simple or unrestricted — that is taken up further on. What has been shown so far is the fatwā, and fatwā is a different matter from taqwā. According to all the ʿulamāʾ, it is permissible for a Muslim to eat what a Jew or a Christian has slaughtered, and there is no requirement to investigate how it was slaughtered — mechanically, by hand, or otherwise. There are only two cases in which the food of Ahl al-Kitāb may not be eaten. The first is where a person openly sees them invoking, at the time of slaughter, a name other than Allah's (swt) — in the name of the church, of a particular saint, or the like.

Where the wrong name is seen and heard with one's own eyes and ears, the animal slaughtered next to oneself, the meat becomes ḥarām — because of the third verse of Sūrat al-Māʾidah, where Allah (swt) declares forbidden that over which a name other than His has been invoked; this verse prohibits it, because the wrong invocation has been directly witnessed. But where it was not witnessed, no assumption may be made that the Christian or the Jew said something, or might have said something, merely to spite or "poison" the questioner. According to the sharīʿah, according to fiqh, it is not even permitted to investigate: if a Christian neighbour gives something to eat, of the meat, it is ḥalāl. One may not ask a Christian — excuse me, George, where did you get this meat, how did you slaughter it, did you say Bismillāh over it — none of these questions may be asked. If genuinely in doubt, simply do not eat it, but take it anyway, for the sake of the relationship with the neighbour.

The second case is where, instead of slaughtering the animal with a blade so that it bleeds, they strangle it or beat it to death — choking it, or striking it on the head until it dies — without any bleeding at all. This is not ḥalāl, again by the third verse of Sūrat al-Māʾidah, where Allah (swt) forbids that which dies of itself, the strangled animal, and the animal beaten to death, in the same verse. Whatever method is used to strangle an animal — with a wire or otherwise — considered by them a humane method precisely because it avoids bleeding the animal, or however they beat it to death, it is not permissible to eat the result, because it is ḥarām. But if they slaughtered by machine, or bled the animal by any method, it is not appropriate to investigate whether they did so correctly or not.