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What is the ruling on eating animals while they are still alive? And what is the evidence for it?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

Eating fish alive or cooking them alive is Islamically forbidden and condemned by scholars, as it involves torturing the fish unnecessarily. Some scholars have deemed it haram (forbidden), while others consider it makruh (disliked). As for eating animals alive, it is haram. What is cut from an animal while it is still alive is impermissible to eat because it is considered maytah (dead meat), based on the Prophet Muhammad's (peace be upon him) saying: "Whatever is cut from an animal while it is alive is maytah."

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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