What does Islam say about animals and animal rights?

Islam teaches that animals are fellow creatures of Allah with their own worship, their own communities, and their own rights over the people around them. Kindness to an animal is an act of worship that can bring forgiveness, and cruelty to an animal is a sin that Allah will judge. The Quran puts it in one sentence:

وَمَا مِن دَآبَّةٖ فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَلَا طَـٰٓئِرٖ يَطِيرُ بِجَنَاحَيۡهِ إِلَّآ أُمَمٌ أَمۡثَالُكُمۚ مَّا فَرَّطۡنَا فِي ٱلۡكِتَٰبِ مِن شَيۡءٖۚ ثُمَّ إِلَىٰ رَبِّهِمۡ يُحۡشَرُونَ

“There is no creature on the earth, and no bird flying on its wings, that is not a community like you. We have left nothing out of the Book. Then to their Lord they will be gathered.”

Quran 6:38

What does the Quran say about animals?

The Quran describes animals as signs of Allah and as worshippers in their own right:

وَٱلطَّيۡرُ صَـٰٓفَّـٰتٖۖ كُلّٞ قَدۡ عَلِمَ صَلَاتَهُۥ وَتَسۡبِيحَهُۥ

“And the birds with wings outspread: each one knows its prayer and its glorification.”

Quran 24:41

Allah provides for every creature on earth (11:6), and He tells of the beauty people find in their herds “when you bring them home in the evening and when you take them out to pasture” (16:6).

Several sūras are named after animals, among them the Cow (al-Baqara), the Cattle (al-Anʿām), the Bee (al-Naḥl), the Ant (al-Naml), the Spider (al-ʿAnkabūt), and the Elephant (al-Fīl). In Sūrat al-Naml, an ant warns her colony to take shelter so that Solomon (peace be upon him) and his army do not crush them unaware, and the prophet smiles at her words and thanks his Lord (27:18–19). The Quran asks its readers to see animals with the same attention.

What did the Prophet ﷺ teach about kindness to animals?

The Prophet ﷺ told of a man walking in the heat who found a well, climbed down, and drank. When he came up, he saw a dog panting and licking the damp earth from thirst. He went back down, filled his leather sock with water, held it in his teeth as he climbed, and gave the dog a drink. Allah thanked him and forgave him. The Companions asked whether there is a reward even for kindness to animals, and he answered:

«فِي كُلِّ كَبِدٍ رَطْبَةٍ أَجْرٌ»

“In every living creature there is a reward.”

Sahih al-Bukhari 2363

He also told of a woman who entered the Fire because of a cat she shut up, neither feeding it nor letting it go to find food (Sahih al-Bukhari 3318). Between these two stories lies the whole ethic: a creature in your power is a trust (amāna), and Allah asks about it.

The Prophet ﷺ acted on this teaching. He entered a garden in Medina where a camel wept at the sight of him; he stroked it until it calmed and asked for its owner, a young man of the Anṣār. “Do you not fear Allah regarding this animal that Allah has placed in your possession? It has complained to me that you starve it and wear it out” (Sunan Abi Dawud 2549). While travelling, his Companions took two chicks from a nest and the mother bird circled overhead in distress. He said, “Who has distressed this bird by taking her young? Return them to her” (Sunan Abi Dawud 2675).

What rights do animals have in Islam?

From the Quran and the Sunnah, the jurists drew a clear set of duties toward animals:

• Food, water, and shelter. “Fear Allah regarding these animals that cannot speak,” the Prophet ﷺ said when he saw a starved camel (Sunan Abi Dawud 2548).
• Rest and fair work. No overloading or exhausting a working animal.
• Protection of the face. He forbade striking or branding an animal’s face (Sahih Muslim 2116a).
• No sport with suffering. “Do not make any living thing a target” (Sahih Muslim 1957a); see also Is hunting for sport haram?
• No burning. “None may punish with fire except the Lord of the fire” (Abu Dawud 2675). When a prophet of old burned an ant colony, Allah rebuked him for destroying “a community that glorifies Allah” (Sahih al-Bukhari 3019).
• Mercy at the end of life. A swift death for an animal in incurable pain, and no killing of healthy animals without need (Can Muslims spay, neuter, or put down a pet?).

The same care applies to cats and dogs kept at home, as explained in Did the Prophet Muhammad have a cat? and Can Muslims have dogs?

How should animals be slaughtered?

The Quran permits eating meat, and it reminds the believer what Allah wants from a sacrifice: “Their flesh and their blood do not reach Allah; what reaches Him is your devotion” (Quran 22:37). The Prophet ﷺ commanded excellence in slaughter: a sharp blade and an animal spared distress (Sahih Muslim 1955a). Halal meat that comes from animals raised in misery falls short of this ethic, which is why many Muslims today seek out humanely farmed meat or eat less of it (Is halal slaughter cruel?).

How did Muslim societies care for animals?

The caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) is reported to have said that if even a stray animal died of neglect on the banks of the Euphrates, he feared Allah would ask him about it. Muslim societies set up charitable foundations for animal welfare: Ottoman endowments protected storks, and the Mamluk sultan Baybars endowed a garden in Cairo for the city’s cats in the thirteenth century, which the English writer Edward William Lane still described centuries later. These foundations turned the hadith of the thirsty dog into public institutions.

A closing word

The Prophet ﷺ summed up the whole teaching:

«الرَّاحِمُونَ يَرْحَمُهُمُ الرَّحْمَنُ ارْحَمُوا مَنْ فِي الأَرْضِ يَرْحَمْكُمْ مَنْ فِي السَّمَاءِ»

“The merciful are shown mercy by the All-Merciful. Be merciful to those on the earth, and the One in heaven will be merciful to you.”

Jamiʿ al-Tirmidhi 1924, graded sahih by al-Albani

Fill the water bowl, open the window for the trapped bird, slow down for the cat in the road. Each of these is a small mercy, and Allah sees every one.