#172: Ruling on the Use of Hybrid Ram For Eid Sacrifice

QUESTION

ON USING A HYBRID RAM FOR THE ĪD SACRIFICE

Assalaam alaikum
Please What’s the Islamic position on using a hybrid ram for eid-al-adha sacrifice?

ANSWER:

Alhamdulillah, it should be known that this question is simply a very modern matter which has no precedence in the time of the predecessors to the best of our knowledge.

However, there is a Principle in “Qawa’id al-Fiqh” as follows:

الحكم على شيء فرع عن تصوره

“The ruling on a thing is a necessary result of a proper conceptualization of that thing”

This means we must fully comprehend the matter been asked before we can pass the Islamic Ruling on it.

It is stated from a quotation in BBC by Wikipedia:

“sometimes called a Geep or a Shoat. It is the hybrid offspring of a sheep and a goat. Although sheep and goats seem similar and can be mated, they belong to a different genera… Sheep belong to the genus Ovis and have 54 chromosomes, while goats belong to the genus Capra and have 60 Chromosomes…”

It is established in BioMedical Sciences that such a hybrid would definitely result in a different creation.

On the online Bio-Medical Literature “PubMed NCB for Medicine”, a case scenario was given as follows:

“At the Botswana Ministry of Agriculture in 2000, a male sheep impregnated a female goat resulting in a live offspring. This hybrid had 57 chromosomes, intermediate between sheep (54) and goats (60) and was intermediate between the two parent species in type. It had a coarse outer coat, a woolly inner coat, long goat-like legs and a heavy sheep-like body. Although infertile, the hybrid had a very active libido, mounting both ewes and does even when they were not in heat”
End quote

And whenever an animal has a different number of chromosomes, then it is completely a different animal different from its parent. It is also apparent from the test results here that the animal was completely different from both sheep and goat: goat-like legs and heavy sheep-like body.

Therefore, the Geep or Shoat cannot be referred to as either sheep or goat. The Shari’a is clear on the animala that may be used as sacrifice. It is 6 months and above for Sheep, 2 years and above for cattle and 5 years and above for camels.

This is what the Fuqahaa have explained.

Therefore, we conclude that the use of such an animal for udhiya intentionally knowing its a gentic hybrid of two different animals is not permissible. Note that our discussion here excludes the ruling of its artificial mutation, what we are talking here regards only using it for udhiya on the day of Id. Allaahu A’alam. **************************