Halal Food Guide 8/11 - Donkey, Horse, Mule - Do We Consider Its Meat Halal?

So moving on from the sea creatures, we go on to the land creatures. And this is where we see the simple list here, all land animals are haram, except this. And the domesticated animals, cow, sheep, goat, camel are known, some of you might be surprised, horse, donkey and mule. But there is a star besides it, and star means it is makruh', but it is not haram.

I'm told in some of the parts of the Muslim world they serve donkey biryani, people don't even know what they are eating. But anyway, it is makruh', it is not haram. Coming to the wild animals: buffalo, mountain sheep, wild ass or gazelle or deer, this is all permissible.

So when you hear about the Robin Hood's story, hunting deer in the forest there, as far as making it halal or not, that is permissible. But there are certain things that we have to keep in mind.

Number one, in case of the domesticated animals, their meat becomes halal only if they are slaughtered according to the Shari'ah laws. We are not going to go into details of that. The main thing is that the slaughterer must be a Muslim, and he should say the basmalah, the bismil-Lah at the time of the slaughtering. And it doesn't even matter whether it is done manually or mechanized slaughtering, as long as the conditions are fulfilled, it would be acceptable.

In case of the wild animals, their meat is halal only when they are hunted by a Muslim who says basmalah at the moment of shooting, pulling the trigger, or letting the string of the bow go at that time, and he says bismil-Lah. Or when he is throwing the spear, or whatever weapons that you use. Actually you are even allowed in Islam to use hunting dogs for hunting. And when you let that hunting dog go to say go to this animal, this is where you had to say Bismi-Llah, Al-Rahmani, Al-Rahim, at that time. But these are all, I don't think it's common, but just to complete the discussion here.