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Selling buffalo pizzle for dog food

Question

Assalaamu alaykum. I sell buffalo pizzle for dog food. Is this haram or halal? Please give me a reply in the light of the Quran and the Sunnah. Regards.

Answer

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah and that Muhammad, sallallaahu ʻalayhi wa sallam, is His slave and Messenger.

The body parts of the lawful animals are deemed lawful for consumption as long as the animal is slaughtered according to the Islamic sharee'ah given the general indication of the verse that reads (what means): {...Lawful for you are the animals of grazing livestock except for that which is recited to you (in this Quran)...} [Quran 5:1] The exception in this case is blood; it is unlawful for the Muslim to consume blood.

Hence, as long as the buffalo or any other animal is slaughtered according to the sharee'ah, there is no religious impediment to selling its penis (pizzle). Some scholars, such as the Hanafis, held that it is disliked to eat the penis of a sheep; however, selling something does not entail consuming it.

Regarding dog food, the basic principle is that it is lawful to make and sell dog food as long as it does not contain an ingredient whose sale is prohibited, such as pork or dead animals. The fact that some people keep dogs without a valid reason in the sharee'ah (such as guarding property or sheep, or hunting) does not make it unlawful to feed those dogs or sell dog food. Islam enjoins kindness towards animals and rewards the person who is kind to them, and the sin of keeping a dog without a valid reason is upon the person who keeps it.

Allaah knows best.

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