Is it haram to buy/sell a dog? | Mufti Abu Layth

i had been asked a question about about owning pets okay can all right yep i've been asked a question about is it permissible to own a pet as in biopet and you may wonder why such a question

because there are certain hadith that are in the books which may give that impression now if you take a look at this hadith it's this particular one is from sahih muslim and you can see it right there it's being transmitted through abu zubair who obviously is questionable but nevertheless from jabir that the thumbnail kelp was and sanor is arguably to some a wild cat into some uh you know maybe a cat but really it's more a wild

kind of cat not the domesticated cats that the prophet he forbade uh people from uh getting that and he kind of told him off reprimanded them for it and you've got another hadith right here of a similar nature and there's several like this by the way by varying companions and this particular one that you can see right here it mentions uh that the prophet from rafi abner that the prophet islam said that the price uh of a that the the money made from a dog

meaning to sell a dog is habit is foul and so the mahar the money paid to a prostitute or but the word mahar actually means the dowry for the prostitute is khabib is foul and the kaspal hadjam is foul now the hajjam means the person who does hijama bloodletting or copping which is practiced now in these hadith it appears that the prophet is saying that these things are habit or are

you know foul so people have understood this to mean haram right now i just wanted to clarify that that's not the case this is not haram okay to buy a pet is not haram and scholars have clearly highlighted that including several maliki's you will get sahanun ibn kanana the student of imam malik you will get imam abu hanifa who highlights that it's permissible now this was all part why such

narrations uh about dogs because there's other narrations where the prophet says beware of such a dog that is like this and it has certain features and then in certain narrations don't keep them in your homes and don't do this this as i've highlighted before was all to do um with the diseases that certain pets or certain animals had like dogs that were infected with rabies and it became indistinguishable and you weren't sure which dog had it and which didn't it's not like today where people get these things tested

and these illnesses like rabies are incredibly fatal so even today despite modern medicine unless treated within a small window even today it is fatal so you can imagine 1400 years ago how you know how incredibly dangerous such things were and hence the prophet said if a dog licks a bowl of water or a bowl of something that wash it out seven times and an eighth time with soil and it's interesting how

rabies cannot survive in uh in certain things like soil because this such a ruling is not even given for a pig it doesn't say like if a pig licks something or drinks from a bowl you don't have to wash it seven times but the prophet said this so why and it's because of the diseases that they were carrying and hence the prophet said at a particular time to put down dogs where they could find them but it was not it wasn't a religious ruling it was a ruling based on the the kind of uh the diseases that

were going around at that time so similarly here the prophet was discouraging people from going to buy more dogs it wasn't a religious ruling okay and these all of these things were like that they were circumsta circumstantial they were not based on a religious uh pretext or premise it was not on a religious premise but more worldly advice now you may ask that okay mufti um

where is the precedence for this that you know you've cited that there is a difference of opinion certain olimar have said this there's been several malikis but have some other ulama clarified or expanded on this and for that you've as an example here is imam azeri a legend from the maliki method in his commentary on the talking of all the abdul wahab al-baghdadi and you see in this he will speak about

um where he's speaking about the purity of animals and things like this and the discussion on the dog and he highlights that uh the hadith of tahrir therman that purchasing or selling a dog and the harim it being haram in and he goes into it for certain reasons he says it's either for uh for example that it's impure and he raises these objections and he says well it's not impure because the malikia can consider all living creatures

uh to be pure in fact life necessitates purity as an axiom and then he says um that what uh he says then then why you know because you've got this hadith you're saying that um it's not le admil it's not because it's impure what about benefit selling something that has no benefit he goes well that's not true because people can keep dogs for you know as a guard dog or a sheepdog or or they can have benefits for it so that's not the case then he says well what could you say he says he says then you respond

or they are responded to by allah that this prohibition is simply a discouragement it's not something that's haram it's just saying well it's just kind of trying to dissuade people but why he says it's trying to encourage people to raise their their kind of expectations of um of um of the profession or worldly aspirations

you see him that try and don't just be like somebody that is copying and doing hijab or bloodletting or trying to sell a dog or do things like try and aim higher in life and he mentions um and that's and that's uh from imam mazari in his commentary on the talking of bodhi abdul wahab but more than that moving to sahil bukhari example of that is here is a hadith

in bukhari where you can see right now that's let me see i'll bring it up but there is a narration sorry that was the same one there is a narration in bukhari that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam himself has hijama done so he has hijama and he pays uh the person so if that's let me just see if i can

bring it up to show it to you guys as well there it is so nope hmm

all right there it is so you can see that here there is a hadith in bukhari that the prophet uh and he paid the person who did the coping now this is a hadith where ibn abbas is transmitting it that if it was haram then why would the prophet himself have this done and himself pay the person so it was not haram but it was it was dependent it was circumstantial and contingent

upon certain factors so yes the prophet did at times discourage uh bloodletting cupping why especially when people were fasting or in certain periods when uh when the community was suffering from a lack of food and sustenance and they had been they didn't have much crops and things like this now bloodletting would just make a person you know just weaken the people and because some people felt it was a cultural thing or you know some people also associate you know like a freshness and even like a good luck to it

because of maybe the confidence they get so they do it religiously so let's say they have you know cupping every week or every two weeks done now or every month done now if the community was suffering from malnutrition and people are already weak but because these people out of habit are going to do it anyway and it's going to further weaken that small society it's situations like this that the prophet said that kaspar hadjam is khabib because right now it would be foul because it would just

further add to the suffering so these rulings are based on on contingencies they are not absolutes okay it is permissible to buy a pet or to sell a pet i hope that clarifies that and i did explain as well the ruling as explained by certain scholars i did mention that um imam abu hanifa was also amongst those ulaman i did here is a hanafi source just to show that as well this is

from his on the mishkat just mentioning those ulama that said it was uh right that it was only the dangerous animal that was forbidden but otherwise abu hanifa does say that look you can benefit by buying and selling dogs okay i hope that helps right let's move on people yes of course and somebody has mentioned things like

uh shepherd dogs and stuff like that sheepdogs of course um those even scholars many scholars historically made that exception but i was saying this unrest unrestricted provided there are no health um safety concerns then it is permissible from an islamic perspective