Dhabihah

Dhabihah

Dhabīḥah (or Zabiha, Arabic: ذَبِيْحَة‎ ḏabīḥah, "slaughter(noun)") is, in Islamic law, the prescribed method of ritual slaughter of all animals excluding camels, locusts, fish and most sea-life. This method of slaughtering animals consists of a swift, deep incision with a sharp knife on the throat, cutting the jugular veins and carotid arteries of both sides but leaving the spinal cord, and thus the capacity to feel pain until death, intact.

The precise details of the slaughtering method arise from Islamic tradition educated by the prophet Muhammad, rather than direct Quranic mandate. It is used to comply with the conditions stated in the Qur'an:

Forbidden for you are carrion, and blood, and flesh of swine, and that which has been slaughtered while proclaiming the name of any other than God, and one killed by strangling, and one killed with blunt weapons, and one which died by falling, and that which was gored by the horns of some animal, and one eaten by a wild beast, except those whom you slaughter; and that which is slaughtered at the altar and that which is distributed by the throwing of arrows ; this is an act of sin. —– Al-Maa'idah 5:3