Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
Is it wajib for children below the age of puberty who has above the nisab to do qurbani [the ritual slaughtering, udhiya] on eid al adha? If it is wajib can the parents pay on behalf of the child or does it have to come from the child’s wealth?
Walaikum assalam,
It is certainly not obligatory for the parents to slaughter for their children from the parents’ own money. As for the children’s money, there are two positions in the Hanafi school about this.
Imam al-Haskafi chose in his Durr al-Mukhtar that slaughtering (udhiya) is not obligatory from the property of a child. Sayyidi Ibn Abidin confirmed this in his Radd al-Muhtar (Kitab al-Udhiya’), and was followed in that by his son Allama Ala al-Din in his al-Hadiyya al-`Ala’iyya (p. 215), where he mentioned that:
“The conditions for slaughtering (udhiya) to be necessary (wajib) are:
1. Islam
2. Freedom
3. Being resident
4. Sanity
5. Adulthood
6. The material sufficiency that is required for zakat al-fitr to be obligatory on one.
It is not a condition that one be male, so it is necessary for women as well.
What counts is for these conditions to be met at the end of the time. [B: The time in question begins on the first day of Eid al-Adha, and ends on the third day of Eid before Maghrib time enters.]
Its integral is to slaughter that which is permitted to slaughter of cattle (F: such as a sheep, or a seventh of a camel or cow), nothing else. [B: Thus, it is prohibitively disliked (makruh tahriman) to slaughter a chicken or rooster with the intention of the ritual slaughter.]” [Ala’ al-Din Abidin, al-Hadiyya al-`Ala’iyya, 215, notes from Shaykh Burhani’s marginal comments marked with B’]
And Allah knows best.
Wassalam,
Faraz Rabbani.