Buying beautiful birds because of their colours and voices

Question Is it permissible to buy beautiful birds so that one can enjoy their voices and colours?. Praise be to Allah. Selling beautiful birds such as parrots, nightingales etc, so as to enjoy their voices, is permissible, because looking at them and listening to their voices is a permissible aim. There is no Islamic text…

Question

Is it permissible to buy beautiful birds so that one can enjoy their voices and colours?.

Praise be to Allah.

Selling beautiful birds such as parrots, nightingales etc, so
as to enjoy their voices, is permissible, because looking at them and
listening to their voices is a permissible aim. There is no Islamic text
that forbids us to sell them or keep them, rather there are reports which
may be understood as meaning that it is permissible to keep them if one
gives them food and water and does whatever else they need. For example,
al-Bukhaari narrated that Anas said: I had a brother who was called Abu
‘Umayr – he (the narrator) said: I think he was a weanling – and when he
came he would say: “O Abu ‘Umayr, what happened to the nughayr?” – a small
bird with which he used to play. Al-Haafiz said in his commentary Fath
al-Baari, when listing the things that we learn from this hadeeth: It
indicates that it is permissible for children to play with birds, and it is
permissible to spend money on permissible things that will entertain
children, and it is permissible to keep birds in cages and the like, and to
clip the wings of birds, because one or the other must have been done in the
case of Abu ‘Umayr’s bird, and whichever is the case, the other comes under
the same ruling. There is also the hadeeth of Abu Hurayrah (may Allaah be
pleased with him), according to which the Prophet (peace and blessings
of Allaah be upon him) said: “A woman entered Hell because of a cat that she
detained, and she did not give it food or water, or let it eat from the
vermin of the earth.” If this is permissible in the case of cats, it is also
permissible in the case of birds etc.

Some scholars are of the view that it is makrooh to keep
birds as pets, and some of them said that it is not allowed, and they said
that is because man has no need to listen to their voices or enjoy looking
at them; rather this is a kind of extravagance, luxury and soft living, and
it is also a kind of foolishness, because it is enjoying listening to the
voice of an animal which is longing to be free, and which is sad because it
is not able to fly in the sky, as it says in al-Furoo’ wa Tas-heehihi
by al-Mardaawi (9/4) and al-Insaaf (4/275). End quote.

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.