The Vegan Muslim Initiative-Don’t Kill An Animal This Eid
Posted on July 27th, 2020
Vegan Muslim Initiative
No, I am not going to sacrifice an animal this Eid-ul-Adha nor am I going to pay someone to do it for me.
Instead, my sacrifice is going to be of a non animal nature and yes, it is religiously sanctioned and justified.
I saw animals being slaughtered when I was a boy and it hurt me deeply.
I couldn’t understand why such beautiful creatures had to die.
Still don’t.
Remember, killing is not something humans are innately born to do.
Children do not naturally kill kittens, lambs and bunnies. They play, explore with and protect them. Their first instinct is to love.
In other words, I don’t see how it’s part of the fitra” or natural human disposition to go out of one’s way to kill when there’s no genuine need to.
Yes, I am aware of the verses in the Qu’ran regarding consuming certain animals but if you’ve ever seen an animal get slaughtered from a young age when your innocence is still intact, it stays with you; believe me.
We’re told Islam requires us to slaughter humanely. What exactly, is humane” slaughter?
The word humane is defined as: having or showing compassion or benevolence.
How does one compassionately” or benevolently” cut someone’s throat? Doesn’t the act of killing by definition negate any benevolence?
This is another discussion worth exploring as I genuinely would love to learn.
For now, I know in my heart God will not be displeased because I decided to show compassion to his creatures and not kill them.
In fact this attitude was openly condoned by the Prophet Muhammad in an authentic tradition:
Qurra ibn Iyas reported: A man said, O Messenger of Allah, I was going to slaughter a sheep but I had mercy on it (or felt sorry for it).” The Messenger of Allah (pbuh) said, If you had mercy on the sheep, then Allah will have mercy on you twice.” (al-Adab al-Mufrad 373 Book 20, Hadith 373), Graded as Sahih (authentic) by Sh. Al-Albani, rh).
The Issues At Hand
Having said that, let me make a couple of things abundantly clear from the outset:
- I am not here to argue against the fact Islam allows eating certain animals. It does.
- Nor am I here to declare and/or make what is permissible impermissible and vice versa. Not my area.
I’m here to ask how these can be reconciled with the very real challenges we are faced with today.
Yes, some difficult and perhaps uncomfortable questions will be asked and I sincerely hope our scholars, learned folks and community alike have the spiritual, moral and ethical courage to address these questions with objectivity and pragmatism.
I feel there are two main points:
1. The impact our animal consumption is having on our world today
2. The way animals are treated especially during the Haj season (and of course at other times of the year).
As stated earlier, Islam permits Muslims to consume certain animals.
So we have the text.
Scholars have written extensively about the rules and regulations on this topic.
We have the guidelines.
Sadly however they are devoid of today’s context.
What we have today are rules and regulations based on what should be” and not what is”.
From an environmental perspective, today’s world is vastly different than the one Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) lived in.
Unfortunately, we are yet to upgrade our practices to reflect this reality.
In fact, we have superimposed our modern day cruel and exploitative practices on Islam thereby rendering the original mosaic into an eyesore.
July 28th, 2020 at 1:12 am
It is time learned and humane Muslims revisit the Quran and agree to remove those verses that can promote violence in the world. So far we are yet to see so called peaceful Muslims protest against the terrorist activities of their brethern misled or not. This is more shameful than being a terrorist oneself – to look the other way when seeing injustice!
July 28th, 2020 at 8:44 am
This initiative must be highly commendable by all the people who care about the fellow living beings. All the
problems the world facing today are due to population explosion and the religions of conveniences which don’t
regard sins as sins and encourage people to sin.
All the crimes (sins) any two legged creature can do anywhere under the sun:
1 killing (animals included? only in Buddhism of course)
2 stealing
3 sexual misconduct
4 lying
5 alcohol/drugs abuse
The above five is the basis for the penal code in every country under the sun, while abstaining from them is
Buddhism’s Five Precepts. The Buddha preached, people who sin, pay for their sins in the animal kingdom for
100s of 1000s of lifetimes before being ‘promoted’ to be two legged creatures again (Darwin’s Theory of
Evolution?).
Charles Darwin explained in his Theory of Evolution, how all the two legged creatures came to be being after
evolving for 3000 million years. Then his book, The Tree of Life, explained how all these other creatures, flies,
mosquitoes etc. etc. came to be being. With his Natural Selection Theory he explained how the people/creatures
look different etc. etc. He showed it is the environment making people black, white, brown etc. etc and today,
all the honest people in the world accept his Theories to be 100% true. Which god will make people in different
colours to fight with each other, planet to live with volcanoes, earth quakes etc etc? Who is mad? God or the
two legged creatures?
People used to worship rivers, mountains, gods in the olden days in the absence of science. Today, a religion has
to pass the science test to be accepted as true. While Buddhism passes all the ‘science’ tests, all the other religions
have no clue in front of science. While The Buddha was real and could see through birth, life, death and the
universe. All The Buddha has preached, science has proven to be true again and again. The Buddha preached,
Health is Wealth. How appropriate for a covid-19 scared world. He preached be kind to fellow living things and
spend this well and make the next one even better by living a good life. But in today’s money ruling world,
people don’t want to know. Their attitude is oh, we pray daily/weekly and our god (mythical) is fine with it,
only to cheat themselves and pay for them in their next 100s of 1000s of lifetimes in the animal kingdom.
The Buddha touched all the civilisations at the time and Iran, Afganisthan, Pakisthan, Bangladesh, Malaysia
and Indonesia used to be Buddhist countries (Google those countries’ Buddhist heritages) before the fastest
breeding religion people got there. They had large families and in double quick time outnumbered the natives
and turned all of them to muslim countries.
Buddhism disappeared from its birth place, India, since it didn’t fit the society with caste systems, animal
sacrifices etc. etc and people quickly reverted back to religions of conveniences. Then invading muslims killed
all the Buddhist monks and burnt down Buddhist Universities (a world’s first) and uprooted the only true religion
on the planet from its birth place. WW1, WW2, Spanish Flu, Covid19 etc. etc. which killed millions of people, no
god ever came to help. Billions of people lived/living never seen one. Wonder why? They all are stuck in books
and www. That’s the reason. No museum in the world dedicate any section for gods while they all have a large
section displaying The Theory of Evolution. The Buddha preached, every universe lifetime a Buddha is born to
guide the two leggeds in the right path. The money ruling world need the only true religion in the world,
Buddhism, to discipline the out of control, greedy, selfish, uncaring two legged creatures (the most dangerous
creature on the planet)!
Covi19 is the animals’ curse who give their lives in billions on daily basis to fill the stomachs of the greedy
two leggeds. The two legged who used to run in the wild naked developed their brains to fly in jets, landed on the
moon and these poor creatures’ brains never developed to curse the most dangerous creature on the planet is
absurd. Today, we know eating meat causes a lot of cancers, diseases (animals’ revenge) and that’s the reason
we see hospital everywhere compared to one every town a few decades ago. Animals too have diseases and
they too have brains not to land on the moon or build computers but to curse the most dangerous creature on
the planet. Blame should fairly and squarely fall on religions of conveniences and governments who don’t
discipline the most dangerous creature!