Wake Up, Animal Rights People!

To see that the animal movement has left the initiative of fighting against the huge spread of halal meat in Britain to the BNP, who organized a protest in Sunderland against Subway sandwich shops selling it (and there many of them all over the country) is shocking and saddening.

I wrote in Islam in the UK, in my site Britain Gallery:

When I first arrived here, the word “halal” was unknown to everybody except the people involved in animal welfare, who knew that the Islamic method of slaughter was bad news indeed for the animals. Now you only have to take a 30-minute drive around London (any part) and you’ll see dozens of Halal signs in shops and restaurants.

It's true that animals should not be killed for food, as vegetarian nutrition is not only adequate but in fact much better for human health than meat eating. It's true that animals always suffer during the process of farming - especially industrial farming -, transport to the point of slaughter, and in the slaughterhouse due to terror and maltreatment. It's true that even so-called "humane" slaughter can sometimes go wrong and animals may be conscious when their throats are cut or they are otherwise killed.

But we can point out all these things and still be opposed to halal and kosher methods of slaughter.

Stunning animals before slaughter is certainly better than not doing that, whatever else is true about farm animals exploitation and suffering.

Sweden has banned ritual methods of slaughter, so this shows that it is a realistic objective in the UK as well.

To find out what ritual slaughter involves, read this post and watch the video.

There is a growing opposition to halal meat among the British people, based on both animal welfare and the just rebellion against being disposessed of the culture and ethics of one's own country.

We should be at the forefront of this protest, which can ony be good for animals because, among other things, will provide a model example of a widespread protest for animal welfare popular among the general public.

This is only one of many ways in which Islam is an obstacle to animal liberation and animal welfare. In the Netherlands, when Muslim politician Hasan Küçük, a Turkish-Dutch representative on The Hague city council for the Islam Democrats, called for a ban on dogs in The Hague, Holland's third-largest city, because dogs are "unclean" in the Islamic legal tradition, it was left to Paul ter Linden, representative of Geert Wilders' PVV on the city council, to reply: "In this country pet ownership is legal. Whoever disagrees with this should move to another country." The Dutch Party for the Animals, whose proposal to make The Hague a dog-friendlier city had prompted Küçük's call for banning dogs, was silent.

Since the number of Muslims in the UK and Europe is doubling faster than you can say "Ramadan", there will be many more times in the future when we'll face this choice: are we going to give in each time? In the long battle ahead are we going to choose political correctness or the animals?