Eating Meat of Doubtful Slaughtering
9-11-1999 | IslamWeb
Question:
Can we eat meat in this country even if we don't know if its halal?
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 
is His slave and Messenger.
If you are in a Muslim country, all the meat you find in the market and which was slaughtered in a Muslim country is lawful to you. But the meat found in the Muslim country and which was imported from a socialist or pagan country such as Russia, China and India is forbidden for us. These are all considered polytheists and their slaughtering is just mere killing and dead animal (any animal not slaughtered according to Muslim’s rites). As you know Maytah (dead animal) is strictly prohibited for Muslims. On the other hand, if the meat is imported from the countries of the People of the Book, there is no restriction regarding its eating if the eatable animals there were slaughtered according to Islamic ways of slaughtering. Allah Says (what means): {This day [all] good foods have been made lawful, and the food of those who were given the Scripture is lawful for you and your food is lawful for them.} [Quran 5:5]
If the Muslim knows that the eatable animal was slaughtered according to illegal means such: electrical shock or strangling or beating the head till death, he should not eat that meat. Allah Says (what means): {Prohibited to you are dead animals, blood, the flesh of swine, and that which has been dedicated to other than Allah, and [those animals] killed by strangling or by a violent blow or by a head-long fall or by the goring of horns, and those from which a wild animal has eaten, except what you [are able to] slaughter [before its death], and those which are sacrificed on stone altars, and [prohibited is] that you seek decision through divining arrows.} [Quran 5:3]
But if the person does not have any knowledge on how they slaughter, but knows that most of the people in the given country kill their animals by shocking or strangling, then it is forbidden for him to eat from such animals because the unlawful side is preponderant on the lawful side. We advise all Muslims to make sure that all what they eat or drink is lawful.
Allah knows best.