Selling Animals and Other Insects

Question
What is the ruling on selling animals and other insects?
Answer
I say, and with God's success: It is a condition for the sale that there is financial value, so the sale does not take place if the financial value is absent. The sale of carrion, blood, the sacrifice of a Magian, an apostate, a polytheist, a madman, and a child who does not understand, as well as the flesh of wild animals, snakes, scorpions, and all creeping things of the earth like the wall gecko, the lizard, the tortoise, and the hedgehog, is not valid. There is also no sale of anything found in the sea, such as frogs and crabs, except for fish, and what is not permissible to benefit from its skin or bones, nor bees unless there is honey in their hive, in which case the hive can be sold with the honey and the bees due to the lack of benefit from them. If they are beneficial by common standards, their sale is permissible. The details regarding the permissibility and impermissibility of these sales, along with evidence, are found in Badā'iʿ al-Ṣanā'iʿ (5: 140-146). Al-Sayyahani quoted from "Al-Hindiyyah": It is permissible to sell all other animals except for pigs, which is the preferred opinion, and this is what is followed in "Al-Hidāyah" and others, as mentioned in Radd al-Muḥtār (5: 69, and Al-Durar al-Mubāḥah 1: 97). Our teacher, Al-Othmani, said in Fiqh al-Buyūʿ (1: 279): "As for what is not considered valuable in common understanding, it is everything that cannot be benefited from... It becomes clear that common value is established by benefit, so everything that is beneficial is considered valuable by common standards, but it is a condition for its sale to be that the benefit derived from it is permissible by Shariah," and God knows best.
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