Bestiality

Bestiality refers to cross-species sexual activity between humans and non-human animals. The related term zoophilia describes a paraphilia in which a person experiences a sexual fixation on non-human animals.

She cut him grass (so much can love command) / She strok'd, she fed him with her royal hand

Quotes

• Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion.
  • Leviticus 18:23 (KJV)

• Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.
  • Leviticus 18:23 (NIV)

•   In Ida's shady vale a bull appeared,
  White as the snow, the fairest of the herd;
  A beauty spot of black there only rose,
  Betwixt his equal horns and ample brows;
  The love and wish of all the Cretan cows.
  The queen beheld him as his head he rear'd;
  And envied ev'ry leap he gave the herd.
  A secret fire she nourished in her breast;
  And hated ev'ry heifer he caress'd.
  A story known, and known for true, I tell;
  Nor Crete, though lying, can the truth conceal.
  She cut him grass (so much can love command)
  She strok'd, she fed him with her royal hand;
  Was pleas'd in pastures with the herd to roam,
  And Minos by the bull was overcome.
  Cease, Queen, with gems t'adorn thy beauteous brows,
  The monarch of thy heart no jewel knows.
  Nor in thy glass compose thy looks and eyes;
  Secure from all thy charms thy lover lies:
  Yet trust thy mirror, when it tells thee true,
  Thou art no heifer to allure his view.
  Soon wouldst thou quit thy royal diadem
  To thy fair rivals; to be horned like them.
  If Minos please, no lover seek to find;
  If not, at least seek one of human kind.
  The wretched queen the Cretan court forsakes;
  In woods and wilds her habitation makes;
  She curses ev'ry beauteous cow she sees;
  “Ah, why dost thou my lord and master please!
  And think'st, ungrateful creature as thou art,
  With frisking awkardly to gain his heart.”
  She said; and straight commands with frowning look,
  To put her, undeserving, to the yoke.
  Or feigns some holy rites of sacrifice,
  And sees her rival's death with joyful eyes;
  Then when the bloody priest has done his part,
  Pleas'd, in her hand she holds the beating heart;
  Nor from a scornful taunt can scarce refrain,
  Go, fool, and strive to please my love again.”
    Now she would be Europa.—Io now;
  (One bare a bull, and one was made a cow.)
  Yet she at last her brutal bliss obtain'd,
  And in a wooden cow the bull sustained;
  Fill'd with his seed, accomplish'd her desire,
  Till, by his form, the son betray'd the sire.
  • Ovid, Ars Amatoria, I, 289-332. Pasiphae and the Bull
  • Several hands, Ovid's Art of Love, &c. (1855)

• Narrated Abdullah ibn Abbas: The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: If anyone has sexual intercourse with an animal, kill him and kill it along with him. I (Ikrimah) said: I asked him (Ibn Abbas): What offence can be attributed to the animal? He replied: I think he (the Prophet) disapproved of its flesh being eaten when such a thing had been done to it.
  • Sunan Abu Dawood, 5. Kitab Al-Hudud ('Book of Prescribed Punishments'), Hadith 4449
  • Translated by Ahmad Hasan (1984), and quoted in Richard C. Foltz, Animals in Islamic Tradition and Muslim Cultures (2006), p. 21

• 'Asim reported from Abu Razin on the authority of Ibn 'Abbas saying: There is no prescribed punishment for one who has sexual intercourse with an animal.
  • Sunan Abu Dawud, 5. Kitab Al-Hudud ('Book of Prescribed Punishments'), Hadith 4465

• The volumes of fatwas devote pages and pages to an even more exotic subject—namely, what the believer should do with an animal which has been used for intercourse. ... While others may be a bit squeamish in discussing such questions, and a little surprised at encountering them in ‘religious’ books, the ulema have no qualms about discussing such matters and laying down the law on them as much as on any other matter. They regard it as one of their functions to do so.
  • Arun Shourie, The World of Fatwas, or, The Shariah in Action (1995), Ch. 2