THE DAILY BLADE: Are Muslims Required To Kill To Worship Allah?
The Stiletto is a committed carnivore (nutrition police be damned!), as anyone who’s clicked through her FAQs: The Spam Edition already knows. Having said that, she was horrified by the hundreds of thousands of calves, goats, sheep and other animals brutally slaughtered worldwide to celebrate Eid al-Adha about a week ago (second item, The Daily Blade, January 3, 2007).
There is a difference between the state executing Saddam Hussein after a fair trial as opposed to a vengeful mob tearing him apart limb from limb. So too, there is a difference between an animal being slaughtered in humane, hygienic conditions as opposed to being hacked at by an untrained butcher in his back yard or by the side of the road.
The very thought of these poor beasts being wrestled to the ground and having their throats slit without being stunned – and the mental image of rivers of blood running down the street - makes The Stiletto’s stomach turn. If this is not the very definition of barbarism (warning: graphic images) what is?
Such slaughters are not performed only on major religious holidays, either. Sometimes, an animal is sacrificed to give thanks to Allah for a lucky break – as when a group of Turkish airplane mechanics recently butchered a camel on the tarmac of Istanbul’s Kemal Ataturk airport in full view of passengers sitting in planes waiting to taxi from their gates (second item, The Daily Blade, December 18, 2006). Clearly, the practice is not limited to ignorant tribesmen living in remote areas; Istanbul is the most cosmopolitan, "European" city in Turkey.
And now in Europe, which is grappling with the societal and cultural rifts caused by staggering numbers of Muslim immigrants from Turkey, Africa and Asia who defiantly refuse to assimilate, animal sacrifices are becoming so common that some towns put out special bins for the disposal of entrails and other offal, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reports that in Brussels, "Muslims in the city turned an estimated 25,000 sheep toward Mecca … and cut their throats" to celebrate Eid al-Adha." To avoid waits of two hours or more at licensed slaughterhouses, "many Muslims … kill their sheep illegally in their backyards and basements instead."
Belgian animal rights activists are apoplectic. "It's not normal to have thousands of sheep slaughtered like this in the middle of a major European city," Ann De Greef tells The Journal. Muslims are not ghettoized in Belgium, and live amongst "EU officials and other professionals in gentrifying urban neighborhoods." In 2003 De Greef and her group, Global Action in the Interest of Animals, successfully sued to stop municipalities from providing receptacles for the byproducts of illegal animal slaughters, because it only encourages the practice.
And what is People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) doing to stop these animal sacrifices – which are surely taking place in the US as well? Nothing.
A Google News search for the month of December – which includes Hanukkah, Christmas and Eid al Adha – found no articles about demonstrations by the group’s members in the US or overseas protesting the annual massive-scale slaughter of animals by Muslims worldwide. PETA’s own Web site did not have a single press release or "Action Alert" on Eid al-Adha.
The "animal rights" group instead spent its time and resources sending threatening e-mails and letters to church groups in the US that hold "living nativity displays" complete with barnyard animals and an infant lying in a bed of straw, contending that this increasingly popular Yuletide tradition subjects animals "to cruel treatment and danger."
This past Christmas, PETA even targeted Anchorage First Free Methodist Church, which holds an annual living nativity in which parishioners dress up as Mary, Joseph, the three kings – and even as the manger animals. Rev. Jason Armstrong told The Associated Press, "We have some puppet camel things we put out. … We have a cow hood thing that a person will wear that actually just looks spooky. … We even use a plastic baby."
So PETA has no problem harassing Christians for having a couple of animals lie down in the straw a few hours a day for a week or two in December. And the group has no problem likening animal cruelty to the Nazi campaign to exterminate the Jews. But PETA is AWOL when it comes to taking on Muslims engaging in practices that no civilized meat-eater would condone.
Either the group’s leaders and acolytes are afraid of provoking the same sort of Muslim "outrage" that has several cartoonists in Denmark living in fear for their lives, or they cannot reconcile the colliding left-wing ideologies of multiculturalism (good) and animal rights (good) - but wait, animals are being murdered (bad). Their poor little brains hurt so much they had to lie down, and were unable to stop the carnage.
Since PETA, NOW and other "activists" will not ask the politically incorrect questions, The Stiletto will have to do it herself:
† Are Muslims required to kill to worship Allah?
† Is this a "freedom of religion" issue, or a "rule of law" issue?
† How far does a cultural or religious majority have to bend to accommodate customs and practices by a religious minority that are barbaric, cruel, discriminatory or illegal? In addition to animal sacrifices, do Europeans have to tolerate the social and economic subjugation of women? Genital mutilation of pre-pubescent girls? Honor killings?
"We have the right to practice our religion," Coskun Beyazgül tells The Journal. A Turk who heads the state-sponsored Muslim Executive Office, Beyazgül opposes stunning animals before they are ritually slaughtered:
For the sacrifice to be completed in accordance with Islam, the lamb must die from a loss of blood while its head is turned toward Mecca in Saudi Arabia, birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad. Stunning the animals before slitting their throats could lead to the animal dying prematurely, against Islamic principles.
Mr. Beyazgül is also against making donations of money to charity in lieu of sacrificing a live animal, as many Muslims do in the U.S. and other countries.
Beyazgül is a good Muslim, according to FatwaIslam.com: The Most Comprehensive Online Islamic Fatwa Guide (794 fatwas available). The site provides answers to theological questions and explanations of fatwas by more than two dozen Muslim "scholars," who, in turn, cite the writings of ancient Sunni imams representing several schools of religious thought in Koranic interpretation.
From "The Rulings of The Sacrifice To Be Done On The Day of 'Eid Al-Adhaa" (explanatory links to Wikipedia added by The Stiletto):
So with their (the Muslims) consensus of the sacrificing having been legislated, they have differed as to whether it is obligatory or a Sunnah, and there are two sayings:
The first saying – is that it is obligatory and it is the saying of Al-Awzaa’ee and Al-Laith and the madhab of Abee Haneefah and one of two reports from Imaam Ahmad. Shaikh ul Islaam said it is one of two sayings of Imaam Maalik or that it is apparent from the madhab of Maalik.
The second saying – is that it is a highly recommended Sunnah – and it is a saying of the majority, and it is the saying of Ash-Shaafi’ee as well as Maalik and Ahmad as is well-known from the both of them. However, many of those who hold this opinion have stated that abandoning it for the one who is able to perform it is disliked and it is mentioned in Jawaahir al ikleel sharh mukhtasar khaleel that if the people of a land abandon it, then they are to be fought against for that reason - because it is from the Islamic rites.
The English "translation" is nearly incomprehensible, but The Stiletto will take a stab at translating further: Animal sacrifices on Eid al-Adha are either obligatory or highly encouraged for those able-bodied enough to perform them.
Ancient Jewish rituals required animal sacrifice – performed only by a rabbi - but the offering of qorbanot was abandoned in favor of repentance, prayer, good deeds or giving alms to the poor. From Judaism101:
In ancient times, a major component of Jewish ritual was the offering of qorbanot.
[T]he practice of sacrifice stopped in the year 70 C.E., when the Roman army destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, the place where sacrifices were offered. The practice was briefly resumed during the Jewish War of 132-135 C.E., but was ended permanently after that war was lost. …
The Torah specifically commands us not to offer sacrifices wherever we feel like it; we are only permitted to offer sacrifices in the place that G-d has chosen for that purpose. Deut. 12:13-14. It would be a sin to offer sacrifices in any other place, akin to stealing candles and wine to observe Shabbat.
From the start, Christians shunned animal sacrifice, regarding self-sacrifice as the only acceptable way to commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus to absolve mankind of sin:
In Christian teaching, G-d became incarnate in Jesus Christ to accomplish the reconciliation of G-dd and humanity, which had separated itself from G-d through sin … G-d knew limited human beings could not make sufficient atonement, for humanity's offence to G-d was infinite, so G-d became a man to become the sacrifice of the everlasting covenant. In Christian theology this sacrifice replaced the insufficient animal sacrifice of the Old Covenant; Christ the "Lamb of G-d" replaced the lambs sacrifice of the ancient Korban Todah (the Rite of Thanksgiving), chief of which is the Passover in the Mosaic law.
It’s the 21st century, and Muslims are no closer to joining the rest of the civilized world in ending ritualistic animal sacrifice than they were 1,300 years ago. Rather, they want enlightened peoples – Christians, Jews and secularists alike - to accommodate their backwardness.
Anyone who voluntarily emigrates to another country should be prepared to accept that country’s mores and laws. If someone’s religious conscience requires absolute obedience to the tenets of his faith and makes assimilation impossible, he needs to return to his country of origin for the good of his soul.
Trackbacks
-
February 11, 2007
The Stiletto wrote:
Earlier in the month, The Stiletto took People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to task for not even raising a whimper when Muslims in the US and around the world slaughtered tens of thousands of cattle, goats, sheep and other animals in inhumane and unhygienic circumstances during Eid al-Adha. Now, two PETA employees, Adria J. Hinkle and Andrew B. Cook, are on trial in NC on 21 counts each of animal cruelty, littering and obtaining property by false pretenses. Local officials allege that Hinkle and Cook promised to find unwanted animals homes and secretly killed them instead, then ...
Comments