Kindness to Animals — Mercy to What Allah Created

Our Animals in the Quran page is a catalogue: which creatures Allah names in His Book, and where. This page is the other half of the subject — not which animals are mentioned, but how a Muslim is required to treat them. That is a matter of ruling, not of temperament: the Sharīʿah commands specific things, forbids specific things, and attaches reward and punishment to both. What follows is gathered only from the Quran and from narrations verified against this site's own hadith repository, with the grading of each row stated as the repository carries it.

The principle — animals are communities, not things

The Quran does not present animals as raw material. It presents them as umam — communities, ordered and accountable to their Lord, gathered to Him as we are gathered.

They have a share in the earth in their own right — "It is He Who has spread out the earth for (His) creatures" (55:10) — and a form of worship of their own that we do not perceive: "Seest thou not that it is Allah Whose praises all beings in the heavens and on earth do celebrate, and the birds (of the air) with wings outspread? Each one knows its own (mode of) prayer and praise" (24:41). Livestock are then described as a mercy given, not a possession without duties: they carry loads "to lands that ye could not (otherwise) reach except with souls distressed", and the āyah closes by naming the Giver "Most Kind, Most Merciful" (16:7). The animal is subjected to you; the manner of that subjection is legislated.

Refs: Sūrat al-Anʿām 6:38 · Sūrat ar-Raḥmān 55:10 · Sūrat an-Nūr 24:41 · Sūrat an-Naḥl 16:5–8 · Sūrat Yā-Sīn 36:71–73 · see also Animals in the Quran and Raḥmah — mercy to the creation.

The two narrations that set the rule

The Sunnah fixes the two poles of this subject with two short, widely-transmitted narrations. The first is a punishment for confining and starving a single small animal. The second is a forgiveness earned by watering one thirsty animal. Neither concerns a person of standing, a great act, or a large creature — which is exactly the point.

Read the wording closely: she is not condemned for killing the cat outright, but for holding it while refusing it both food and release. The sin is in the neglect of a creature whose life she had taken control over. The mirror image follows, and it turns on the same fact of control — a man who had water and used it.

The Companions' question is the one a reader naturally asks, and the answer is unrestricted: the reward is in every living animal, not only the useful, the owned, or the ritually clean. In another narration of the same theme the one forgiven is a sinful woman of the Children of Israel who drew water for a dying dog with her shoe (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 3321) — the deed was accepted from the least likely person, for the least regarded animal.

Refs: Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 3318, 2364, 2365, 3482 · Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim — site reader no. 6512 · Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 2363, 2466, 6009, 3321 · Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim — site reader no. 5709 · see Raḥmah.

Feeding and watering — a reward in every living thing

Because the reward attaches to the act of sustaining life, it is not confined to animals you own or even intend to feed. What a bird or a beast takes from what you planted is written for you as ṣadaqah:

The same meaning is carried in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim from Jābir, where the Prophet ﷺ asked Umm Mubashshir who had planted her date-palms and then said that whatever men, animals or anything else eat of it becomes charity for the planter (Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim — site reader no. 3840). Practically, this means that a bowl of water left out in heat, a fed street cat, or a tree that shades and feeds birds is not sentimentality — it is recorded ṣadaqah, in the same register as charity given to people.

Refs: Jāmiʿ at-Tirmidhī 1382 — graded ṣaḥīḥ in the site's hadith repository · Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim — site reader no. 3840 & 3842 · Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 2363 · see Sadaqah — Charity.

The animal you own, work or ride

Ownership in the Sharīʿah is a trust with obligations attached, and the Prophet ﷺ made those obligations explicit when he came across a camel starved down to its bones.

A second narration in the same chapter is more striking still. ʿAbdullāh ibn Jaʿfar reports that a camel, seeing the Prophet ﷺ, wept and moaned; he wiped its head until it fell silent, then called for its owner:

Two duties are named there — underfeeding and overloading — and both are framed as a failure of taqwā, not of kindness. A third duty is the animal's rest and grazing while it works for you:

And a fourth, easily missed: an animal is not a chair. The Prophet ﷺ forbade sitting on a beast's back for no purpose while it stands and bears the weight — the mount is for covering ground, and the ground itself is where you conduct your business.

Refs: Sunan Abī Dāwūd 2548, 2549, 2567 — all graded ṣaḥīḥ in the site's hadith repository · Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim — site reader no. 4823 · Jāmiʿ at-Tirmidhī 2858 — graded ṣaḥīḥ in the site's hadith repository · Sūrat an-Naḥl 16:7 · see The rights (ḥuqūq) and Luqaṭah — found property for the stray animal.

What is forbidden outright

Four prohibitions are established in the two Ṣaḥīḥs and the Sunan with wording strong enough — a curse, or an explicit nahy — that the scholars treat them as ḥarām rather than merely disliked.

1. Striking or branding the face

Ibn ʿUmar transmitted the same prohibition and acted on it himself: "The Prophet ﷺ forbade beating (animals) on the face" (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 5541). Marking livestock as such is not what is condemned — the face is.

2. Making a living creature a target

Ibn ʿUmar came upon young men of Quraysh doing exactly this and invoked the Prophet's ﷺ curse upon it (Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim — site reader no. 4926). The ruling covers any use of a living animal as sport or practice rather than for a lawful purpose.

3. Mutilating a living animal (muthla)

4. Burning

Punishment by fire is reserved to Allah, and the Prophet ﷺ rebuked his own Companions for burning an ant colony in the same breath as he ordered a bird's chicks returned to her.

The same rebuke is recorded of an earlier nation. A prophet among the prophets ordered an ant colony burnt after a single ant bit him, and was corrected by revelation:

Refs: Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim — site reader no. 5407, 5409, 5410, 4921, 4923, 4926 · Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 5515, 5541, 3019 · Sunan Abī Dāwūd 2675 & 5268 — graded ṣaḥīḥ in the site's hadith repository.

Slaughter — iḥsān at the hardest moment

Islam permits the eating of lawful animals, and it is precisely there — where an animal's life is taken — that the Sunnah legislates excellence most explicitly. The narration of Shaddād ibn Aws is the foundational text of the whole subject, because it states the rule as a general one (everything) before applying it to slaughter.

The same narration is carried with ṣaḥīḥ chains in Sunan an-Nasāʾī 4405, 4411, 4412, 4413 and 4414, in Jāmiʿ at-Tirmidhī 1409, and in Sunan Abī Dāwūd 2815 — an unusually well-attested text. Two words carry the ruling: sharpen (yuḥidd) and spare suffering (yurīḥ). The blade must be sharp enough to sever quickly, and the handling must minimise the animal's distress.

1. Sharpen the blade first — a dull knife prolongs the death and is a failure of the command, not a detail of technique.
2. Handle the animal gently to the place of slaughter; do not drag, beat or terrify it on the way.
3. Pronounce the name of Allah — "Eat not of (meats) on which Allah's name hath not been pronounced" (6:121).
4. Cut swiftly and completely so that death comes as fast as the method allows.
5. Do not begin to skin or cut further until the animal is dead — cutting from a living animal is the muthla forbidden above.

Refs: Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim — site reader no. 4919 · Sunan Ibn Mājah 3170 · Sunan an-Nasāʾī 4405, 4411–4414 · Jāmiʿ at-Tirmidhī 1409 · Sunan Abī Dāwūd 2815 — all graded ṣaḥīḥ in the site's hadith repository · Sūrat al-Ḥajj 22:36 · see Halal Food and Udḥiyah.

The cat in the house, the dog at the door

The cat has a settled place in the Sunnah, and it is settled by a ruling on purity rather than by affection. When Abū Qatādah tilted a vessel so a cat could drink and his young relative looked at him in surprise, he reported the Prophet's ﷺ words:

The phrase "those who go round among you" places the household cat in the category of what circulates in a home and cannot reasonably be excluded — so its leftover water does not spoil wuḍūʾ. The dog is a different case in fiqh: the rulings on the purity of its saliva and on keeping one without need are treated separately, and the schools differ; what is not disputed is the point this page is about — a thirsty dog earned a man forgiveness, and cruelty to it is forbidden like cruelty to anything else.

Refs: Sunan Ibn Mājah 367 · Sunan Abī Dāwūd 76 — both graded ṣaḥīḥ in the site's hadith repository · Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 2363, 3321 · see Halal Food on purity and Manners & Adab.

Where mercy stops — what may be killed

Mercy in the Sharīʿah is not the same as a blanket prohibition on killing. The Prophet ﷺ named creatures that may be killed even inside the sacred precinct and even by a pilgrim in iḥrām, where the ordinary prohibition on hunting is at its strictest — the licence rests on the harm they do, not on dislike.

And on the other side, certain harmless creatures are singled out for protection by name:

Refs: Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1829, 1828, 3314 · Sunan Abī Dāwūd 5267 — graded ṣaḥīḥ in the site's hadith repository · Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim — site reader no. 4919 · see Hajj Guide on iḥrām restrictions.

Where the scholars differ

The prohibitions above are not disputed. Several surrounding questions genuinely are, and it is more honest to record the difference than to present one school's answer as the religion.

1. Branding away from the face

All agree the face is excluded. Beyond that the reports themselves show a distinction being drawn rather than a blanket ban:

Anas reports seeing the Prophet ﷺ marking zakāt camels himself, and in one narration marking them on the ears (Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim — site reader no. 5413, 5414). On this basis the majority permit marking livestock for identification where there is a need, provided the face is spared. A minority restricted it further, holding that any avoidable burning of an animal is disliked and that only a genuine need — distinguishing zakāt or communal herds — licenses it. Both sides argue from the same narrations.

2. Is cruelty to an animal a major sin?

The cat narration mentions the Fire, which is a marker many scholars use to identify a major sin (kabīrah). Others were more cautious: the wording concerns a specific woman in a specific case, and threats of the Fire in the Sunnah are sometimes for severe warning rather than a statement that every instance of the act carries that consequence. What both positions agree on is that the act is sinful, must be repented from, and is not a small matter. The disagreement is over classification, not over permissibility.

3. Keeping animals confined — cages, tanks, tethering

There is no narration that forbids keeping an animal as such; the cat narration turns on withholding food, water and release, not on confinement in itself. From this, most jurists permit keeping an animal where its needs are properly met, and hold that the prohibition attaches the moment those needs are neglected. Some scholars discouraged caging birds specifically, reasoning by analogy from the reports on grieving a bird for its young and on preventing an animal from its natural sustenance. Neither position can claim an explicit text, which is why the difference persists.

4. Animals we have no early ruling on

Laboratory testing, industrial farming, culling and veterinary euthanasia are not addressed by name in any narration. Contemporary scholars therefore reason from the established principles on this page — necessity, the prohibition of avoidable suffering, and the general command of iḥsān — and reach different conclusions on the details. That is a legitimate area of ijtihād, and this page does not settle it. What the texts do settle is that the burden of proof lies on whoever causes an animal pain to show a real need for it.

Refs: Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim — site reader no. 5410, 5413, 5414 · Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 5541, 3318 · Sunan Abī Dāwūd 2675 — graded ṣaḥīḥ in the site's hadith repository · see how hadith are graded.

Weak reports often quoted on this subject

Animal welfare is a popular topic, and several of the lines that circulate with it are not established. Naming them protects the strong evidence above, which needs no help.

Refs: Sunan an-Nasāʾī 4349, 4445, 4446 · Sunan Ibn Mājah 3171, 3172 — all graded ḍaʿīf in the site's hadith repository · see Hadith Grading and Not Authentic.

What this looks like today

The narrations concern camels, cats, birds and hens because those were the animals at hand. The rulings are about power over a creature that cannot answer back, so they transfer directly.

Common questions

Related: Animals in the Quran · Raḥmah — Mercy to the Creation · Halal Food · Udḥiyah — the Sacrifice · ʿAqīqah · Manners & Adab · The Rights (Ḥuqūq) · Luqaṭah — Found Property