VERSE NO. 3
Through this verse (NO. 3) eleven things have been declared unlawful:-
1- Carrion or dead meat. 2- Blood. 3- The flesh of swine. 4- that on which a name other than God is invoked.
5- If an animal dies by strangling - Pagan Arabs did sometimes press the neck of an animal between two pieces of wood, and by compressing their throat choked them to death.
6- Animals that are killed by violent blows or die of a disease. It is narrated in the commentary of GHARTABI that the Pagan Arabs beated animals to death for the pleasure of their idols.
7- Animals that may die by a headlong fall from a height.
8- Animals that are pierced with the horns or tusks of bulls and boars and etc; and are in anyhow gored to death.
9- The mangled prey of the wild beasts, their flesh being cut or torn roughly; with the exception that you reach the prey in time, and when it is alive, and you clean it by ritual slaughter.
10- This was also an idolatrous rite, that the pagan Arabs used to install pieces of shapeless stones around the sacred shrine (KAABEH). They offered sacrifices to the stones. They then marked the stone with the blood of the sacrificed animal, in order to be accepted by the stone!
11- The Pagan Arab had a sort of gambling, which was casting lots by means of arrows on the principle of lottery. Their arrows were marked, and in some cases the carcase of a slaughtered animal, (sheep, cow, camel, etc.) was divided into equal parts- then the marked arrows were drawn out of a bag as lots and dices are- some of them were blank, and those who drew them would get nothing of the meat. Whatever one could get of a big or small share or nothing at all depended on pure luck, unless there was frauds and tricks.
Now gambling of all kind is forbidden in Islam, and as the division of meat in this way is a form of gambling, it too has been declared unlawful by the Holy Quran:
``And the animals that you divide their meat among yourselves by divining arrow are unlawful.''
