No specific legislation regarding burying animals

23-11-2016 | IslamWeb

Question:

My cat recently died and we buried it in our garden. I want to know whether it will go to heaven. Also, when we brought the cat home, it stayed in the box for 20 minutes, and then my dad took him out of the box and tipped him out of the bag and put him into the grave. We left him in the blanket that he was wrapped in, and I think that his injuries were left as they were, so any soil that was placed on him must have gone into his wounds. After this, we closed his grave. Did we bury him the right way? His grave is six inches deep.

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Answer:

All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah and that Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is His slave and Messenger.

Shrouding and burying the dead as an act of worship is specific to human beings. As for animals, it is not required to do any of that. When an animal dies, its body becomes ritually impure (najis), and the Muslim is enjoined to avoid being in contact with it and to throw it where people would not be harmed by it. The scholars of the Permanent Committee for Islamic Research and Fataawa were asked about vermin and animals and so on; whether they should they be buried or left unburied on the ground?

They replied, "The matter is broad in scope; there is no text in the Sharia to indicate that it is legislated to bury them or to forbid doing so. It is preferable to bury them so that no one would be harmed by their carcasses."

Please, refer to fatwa 133813.

Allah knows best.