Christianity and Animal Welfare

After Support for Christianity Should Not Alienate People, How Christian Charity Developed Western Ethics, Hospitals, Schools and Slavery, Colonialism and Christianity, I've arrived at the fourth (not the last) instalment of my replies to common contemporary criticisms of Christianity.

The issue of how animals are considered is of particular ethical importance so, if I really believed that Christianity debases the moral status of animals, I would not support it.

About the issue of treatment of animals, my reader Tony says:

I cannot see how you, as a vegan, can support the Bible: the treatment of animals in the Bible is appalling, and I say this even though I am not vegan. Burnt offerings of animals is a fundamental aspect of worship in the Old Testament, God is pleased with the smell of burning animal flesh, cutting animals in half is considered 'good' in the eyes of Yahweh, e.g. Exodus 29:16-18 "16 Slaughter it and take the blood and sprinkle it against the altar on all sides. 17 Cut the ram into pieces and wash the inner parts and the legs, putting them with the head and the other pieces. 18 Then burn the entire ram on the altar. It is a burnt offering to the LORD, a pleasing aroma, an offering made to the LORD by fire." It's wrong and primitive Enza.

Here Tony makes the same mistake I've already briefly discussed before: confusing and conflating the Old Testament into Christian doctrines.

This is especially true regarding the subject on which he dwells, offerings of animals, since these two religions, Judaism and Christianity, are on it entirely different, so much so that we cannot even talk of a Judaeo-Christian tradition. There are two distinct traditions, going in opposite directions. If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then it is highly significant that the Old Testament and the New on animal sacrifices have led to antithetical practices.

Judaism here presents, alas, similarities with Islam. Modern ritual slaughter to produce kosher meat in the former and halal meat in the latter is closely related to animal sacrifice.

That is why Rabbi David Wolpe felt the need to write an article In Defense of Animal Sacrifice, fortunately rebuked by the people who commented on it. His arguments are falsely against animal cruelty, in that he doesn't take into any consideration that the stunning of animals before slaughter, which Jewish ritual slaughter does not do, is a humane way to spare them at least some of the agony and anguish.

Christianity, on the other hand, is and has always been one of the very few religions and cultures not to standardly practice animal sacrifices.

Here again, Christianity has produced momentous cultural consequences. Christians claimed that, since Jesus had shed his own blood and offered a perfect sacrifice, there was no more need of animal sacrifice, because the door was now open to access God. In ancient times - and still today in many non-Western cultures -, people believed that the death of a sacrificial (in some cases human) animal was necessary in order to approach God or the gods. After Jesus' sacrifice, Christians rejected animal sacrifices, and this has created in the Christian West a culture averse to them.

As with slavery, the fact that the New Testament does not explicitly condemns the practice of animal sacrifice is much less important - in terms of the effects and the way of thinking that it has generated - than the entirety of its message.

It is so strange how Eastern religions are always praised for their consideration, even reverence, for animals, when Hinduism carries out animal sacrifices on a vast scale. What has been dubbed "the world's goriest mass killing of animals" is a Hindu festival involving the sacrifice of 250,000 animals in the village of Bariyapur, in Nepal.

If we - or some of us - don't associate the ending of animal sacrifices with Christianity, in the other parts of the globe they do:

The practice [of ritual slaughter of animals] is now far less universal than it was once, and in Christian countries it is generally looked upon as one of the basest expressions of primitive superstition. There is, for instance, hardly a book written to defend the “civilizing” role of the white man in India, which does not give publicity to that gruesome side of Hindu religion, through some bloodcurdling description of the sacrifices regularly performed in the temple of the goddess Kali, at Kalighat, Calcutta.

This, once more, gives away where these constant attacks on Christianity originate: from the politically correct, the multiculturalists of today, heirs to the communists of yesterday, who only blame whatever is connected with the Western world for the speck in its eye and never dream of noticing, let alone criticising, the log in the eye of the rest of the world.

I wish that our atheist friends realised that, every time they attack Christianity, they attack the West, our culture, our world, our countries.

Going back to Tony's Biblical quotations, the Old Testament (the several canonical editions of which are largely based on the Tanakh, the "Hebrew Bible") is a collection of Jewish texts, and Judaism is a different religion from Christianity.

The Old Testament pre-dates the birth of Jesus Christ. How can what's written in it be attributed to the teachings of a man who was not alive when it was composed?

In addition, what matters is not so much counting the references to not harming animals in the New Testament, even less in the Old Testament, but looking at the meaning of the whole message.

The animal welfare and rights movements were born out of the compassion that Christianity has inspired throughout its vast influence on Western thought.

Does Tony really think it’s a coincidence that the animal rights movement only started and developed in the part of the world which is historically Christian, the West?

In the moral philosopher Peter Singer's theory of the “expanding circle”, which I think is correct, the moral development of a society goes through stages: first people allow into the sphere of moral consideration only close relatives, then clans, then tribes, then populations, then nations, then the same ethnic group, then the whole human species, and then – and this is the phase which we are entering now in the West – all sentient beings.

Expanding the circle to include all humans was done in the deepest sense, in the most effective and lasting way by Jesus Christ, at a time when that was unthinkable for most people.

Still today, the moral equality of all men is not embraced in every part of the world.

Islam, for example, does not consider all the human species as equal. Islam condones racism, against blacks for instance, and slavery, which still exists in the Muslim world. For Mohammedanism non-Muslims do not have equal status with Muslims, the community of believers, called the “Ummah”. Non-Muslims are not treated with equal consideration and respect as Muslims, nor do they have equal political rights in Islamic countries.

Hinduism incorporates the caste system, a form of inequality which is part of the religion.

It's very difficult, if not impossible, for a culture that has not fully accepted human rights and the equality of all men to develop the idea of animals' moral equality and rights.

That's why only the West, thanks to Christianity, has been able to do so.

In short, there is no comparison.

Without our Christian roots animals would have been in much greater trouble, as well as humans.

To be continued.

Halal Meat Is the First Giant Step of Our Islamization

A few days ago I got up determined to keep Islam and politics out of my mind - I tend to think about such subjects a lot these days - at least until I would turn my computer on and start working.

I went to the front door to check my mail and among the letters there was a leaflet with the menu of a local takeaway. I inspected it and found the dreaded word: "Halal".

There is no way you can keep Islam out of your life, even out of your thoughts for long, in today's Britain, even more so in today's London. The saying "If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain" seems particularly appropriate under the circumstances. I did not want to figuratively go to Islam, but Islam came to me.

I threw in the dustbin the takeaway leaflet, but not before having phoned the place to let the people running it know that I was about to keep their leaflet, since the takeaway is convenient and close to us, but that when I saw they were selling halal meat I got rid of it - which is exactly the truth. I added that there are many other people like me in our area who don't want to eat halal meat and that the takeaway is going to lose business because of this issue.

The only thing I did not mention is that I am a vegetarian, which is the best, surest way not to be affected by halal if you live in Londonistan, although I was vegetarian long before the birth of this problem in the West: I recommend it to everybody, regardless of the halal question. Let's not delude ourselves: even in the best conditions, slaughter is always atrocious for the animals, it is in fact murder. But although a vegetarian, I would not buy anything from a halal-meat-peddling outlet.

People who haven't seen the light sometimes say to me during a discussion that the Islamization of Britain is never going to happen, a view, alas, shared by many.

The fact is that we do not even need to talk about the future, because it is already happening.

A clear case of Islamization already present is that of halal meat.

This subject is one of those that most antagonizes British and other European natives against Islam for two reasons.

The first is that lots of people care about animals and they do not want to see them unnecessarily suffer to satisfy the ritual requirements of a doctrine, Islam, which is alien to us and seems to disprove its ethical and therefore religious status exactly with precepts like these that instruct its believers to increase, rather than diminish, the suffering in the world.

It looks paradoxical that the improvements that our civilized society has introduced to at least alleviate, if not eliminate, the terrible agony of slaughter should be reversed on the whim of a group of people with a way of thinking stuck in the 7th century AD and who came to our countries with their hands stretched out asking to be helped to get out of the poverty and backwardnedss that Islam forces on them, only to practically replicate those conditions here.

The second reason why halal meat is so unpopular is that here we can see in practice, perhaps for the first time on a large scale, what Islamization is.

What many people strongly object to is that they have been compelled to live according to Sharia law against their will, and that is the very essence of Islam and its supremacism.

Many UK schools, hospitals, canteens, hundreds of restaurants and pubs have been routinely serving halal meat to non-Muslims who did not know that they were eating meat from ritually slaughtered animals. Famously, even sporting venues such as Wembley Stadium and Ascot, supermarkets including Waitrose, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Somerfield and the Co-op, fast-food chains like McDonald’s, Subway and KFC, and pizza chains like Domino’s Pizza, Pizza Hut and Nando’s have been selling halal meat without letting their customers know.

Part of the reason for this is that not all meat produced from animals killed by halal methods of slaughter is suitable for Muslim consumption because it may still not meet other Islamic dietary requirements, and therefore may end up being sold to non-Muslims. Something similar happens with kosher meat for Jewish consumption, which may find its way to the wider community.

Even Easter eggs and cat food have been found to be halal in Australia, as denounced by the Aussie website Halal Choices, which is so popular that it has received more than 250,000 visits since the Christian activist Kirralie Smith created it two years ago.

And this is the good news. The movement against halal is global, developed in all Western countries with a Muslim population. Facebook alone pullulates with anti-halal pages, sometimes dedicated to the closure or the prevention of a local abattoir.

Only a couple of months ago a row erupted over a North-East London school's decision to start serving only halal meat to its pupils. Parents objected to these plans of the management at Larkswood Primary School in Chingford. These are people whom we should support. It was also discovered that halal is the only meat served in three-quarters of council-supported schools and academies (46 in total) in Waltham Forest Council.

The Daily Mail reporter who wrote the article about UK institutions and commercial outlets serving halal linked to above has managed to have access to a halal abattoir undercover. Here is what he witnessed:

They [Animals] are fully conscious as their throats are slit by a slaughterman as he utters prayers to Allah to ‘bless’ the animal. The ­creature then bleeds to death in a process that can take more than 30 seconds…

Though the deep incision to the neck cuts through the animal’s windpipe and main arteries, the creatures are still able to cry out.

During my two-hour visit, I watch as lamb after lamb has its throat sliced open while fully conscious. They make pitiful bleating and gurgling sounds as they choke on their own blood. It’s a chilling sound that, once heard, stays with you for days afterwards.

And then there’s the fact that the animals can witness each other being killed as they travel along the ­conveyor belt. Their hooves twitch wildly as they try to break fee.

One lamb cries out for more than 20 seconds before it flops off the end of the conveyor belt and on to a rotating table. From there, it is shackled by its hind legs and hauled up to the ceiling on a hook, where it is left with a dozen others to ‘bleed out’ — another ­important part of the halal process.

Of course, no slaughter of an animal is easy to watch. But it is hard to remain dispassionate as I watch ­dozens of still-conscious animals bleeding to death, the floor covered by an inch of warm, frothy blood.

The British law, which requires animals to be stunned and rendered unconscious before slaughter, should be changed so that it no longer makes exceptions for both halal and kosher, as the new counterjihad party (to which I belong) Liberty GB says in its manifesto. Sweden and Norway banned ritual slaughter in the 1930s. Switzerland, one of the most ancient countries to be based on popular consent and direct democracy, banned it as early as 1893.

It's worth explaining that, if we implement that, nobody will have to go against his or her religious beliefs or commandments.

Islam specifically exempts its faithful from the obligation to eat halal food if none is available:

He hath only forbidden you dead meat, and blood, and the flesh of swine, and that on which any other name hath been invoked besides that of Allah. But if one is forced by necessity, without wilful disobedience, nor transgressing due limits,- then is he guiltless. For Allah is Oft-forgiving Most Merciful. Quran (002:173)

Neither Islam nor Judaism prescribes meat consumption. If a follower of either faith does not want to eat non-permitted meat, he can be a vegetarian, thus also doing a favour to his heart and decreasing his risk of cancer.

Interestingly, it's a major secular Jewish philosopher, Peter Singer, who has this recommendation for Muslims and his fellow Jews in his book Animal Liberation (Amazon UK) (Amazon USA) (page 155, The New York Review of Books, second edition):

Meanwhile, those who do not wish to eat meat slaughtered contrary to the current teachings of their religion have a simple alternative: not to eat meat at all. In making this suggestion, I am not asking more of religious believers than I ask of myself; it is only that the reasons for them to do it are stronger because of the additional suffering involved in producing the meat they eat.

Jewish writer and Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, also a vegetarian, said: "I am not a vegetarian for my own health, but for the health of the chickens" and "every day is Treblinka for the animals". He wrote a very poignant short story, The Slaughterer, in which a compassionate man, Yoineh Meir, is appointed the town's ritual slaughterer in the old country, and obediently performs his duties but his life is turned into a living hell of nightmares and obsessions of blood and slaughter, until madness and drowning himself in the river become his final escape:

The killing of every beast, great or small, caused him as much pain as though he were cutting his own throat. Of all the punishments that could have been visited upon him, slaughtering was the worst.

While we are waiting for the law to be changed to prohibit ritual slaughter, at the very least halal meat should not reach the non-Muslim market (and kosher the non-Jewish), and all meat from animals who were slaughtered when conscious should be clearly labelled as such. There is certainly a vast number of people who want clear labelling, knowledge and choice.

Muslim Illegal Immigrant Arrested for Raping Dog in Italy

Another case of a Muslim raping animals.

In Spain a few months ago a Muslim had killed a horse by anally raping him, and now in Italy an illegal immigrant, an unemployed Moroccan has been arrested for repeatedly raping a dog on a farm in Sicily.

The 32-year-old-man was caught in the act by CCTV cameras.

He had previously spread panic in the countryside near the town of Ragusa by committing two arsons, the second of which on Boxing Day, causing damage for tens of thousands of euros to two local farms, by the use of a lighter.

But that's not enough. He was responsible for the theft of electrical appliances, farm equipment, clothes and food.

In Muslim countries the practice of having sex with and raping animals is much more common than we think.

In Pakistan, a donkey was honour killed after being raped, a treatment ususally reserved to Muslim women. From Wikipedia:

Karo-kari is part of cultural tradition in Pakistan and is a compound word literally meaning “black male” (Karo) and “black female (Kari), in metaphoric terms for adulterer and adulteress. Once labeled as a Kari, male family members get the self-authorized justification to kill her and the co-accused Karo to restore family honor, although in the majority of cases the victim is female, while the murderers are male.

Muslims Kill Conscious Animals for Eid Festival

Today, 26 October, is the Islamic festival of Eid-ul-Adha, which Muslims all over the world "celebrate" by sacrificing animals.

Now, thanks to mass immigration, Muslims will perform this very "civilized" ritual of killing conscious animals (7.5 million every year in Pakistan alone) not only in their own countries but also in ours.

See how Moderate Muslims Sacrifice Animals for Eid Celebrations.

Dog-Walking Protest Outside Canada Mosque

I love this. It's payback time for all the Muslim drivers who have kicked dogs out of their buses or taxis in Europe, Australia, North America.

Islam considers certain animals impure, notably dogs and pigs. This is not a “cultural” thing, it’s a “religious” thing: the Koran says this explicitly and repeatedly.

There have already been many cases of Muslim taxi and bus drivers who have refused to accept even blind passengers with guide dogs, because they consider the animals impure. This makes you wonder: what future will dogs have in a Muslim-majority UK, or Holland, or Germany, or Italy and so on?

Generally speaking, what will be the future of all animals, not just dogs, in a Muslim-majority Europe? Will the conquests (albeit small but still conquests) already made for the animals continue, will they be maintained or will they be eroded?

I very much doubt that we can be optimistic, if we look at how animals are treated in the rest of the world.

Dog-walking protest planned for Toronto mosque

TORONTO - A Facebook event has been launched inviting people to walk their dogs outside an east-end mosque during Islamic prayer sessions.
The call to action was launched to protest a man being arrested while walking his English mastiff at an anti-Israel rally at Queen's Park last Saturday.

The Facebook page encourages people to bring dogs "of all colours and breeds" to the Salahuddin mosque in the city's east end on Sept. 14.

On Saturday, a Jewish man was arrested while his dog near a rally held outside Queens Park by an Islamic group marking Al-Quds Day, a yearly event calling for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Allan Einstoss, a Jew who opposes the Al-Quds doctrine, showed up at the rally with his big-yet-friendly English mastiff, Cupcake. After Einstoss was allegedly told by an Al-Quds demonstrator to keep the dog away, he claims to have been punched in the chest by another. When Einstoss pushed back, he was handcuffed and held by Toronto police.

Cupcake was also reportedly kicked by one of the Al-Quds demonstrators.

Some devout Muslims believe dogs to be unclean and vehemently avoid the animals.

As of midday on Wednesday, five people had signed up for the mosque dog-walk and 253 others had been invited to the event.

One of those who signed up for the event is Brampton resident Walter Sapienza, a 58-year-old owner of two Yorkshire Terriers.

"I thought it was pretty disgusting, the way (Einstoss) was arrested," Sapienza said, adding if Al-Quds demonstrators have a right to call for the destruction of Israel, than others should have the right to walk a dog while they do it.

The crazy episode mentioned in the article is about a Canadian citizen, Allan Eintoss, walking his dog Cupcake in a public park in Toronto. The man was physically assaulted and his dog was kicked, but the police, instead of arresting the Muslim assailants, arrested him because the presence of the dog (a licensed, well-behaved, leashed care dog) had "insulted" the Muslims who were holding an annual anti-Israel rally nearby.

The annual hate-the-Jews day called Al-Quds Day, by the way, invented by the late Iranian dictator Ayatollah Khomeini, at which one protester showed up with the flag of the banned terrorist group Hezbollah - a picture of a fist grasping a machine gun - is a permitted display of anti-Israel demonization and pro-Iran propaganda.

Anti-Halal-Meat Campaigns on Facebook

There is a new flurry of activity of mostly British anti-halal-meat campaigns on Facebook. I have liked, joined, friended, subscribed to all I found, signed petitions, encouraged them and posted on their walls.

I invite you to do the same if you like them. Here they are.

SAY NO TO HALAL MEAT

Say NO to Halal slaughter in Skegness - it collects signatures for a petition to the East Lindsey District Council (E.L.D.C.) to stop a new halal slaughterhouse from opening in in Skegness, Lincolnshire, England. The page started less than a month ago, on 27 July, and they have already collected 566 signatures; 434 are still needed.

E.L.D.C.: Stop the Halal slaughter house opening in Skegness - this is the petition page where to sign.

Say No To Skegness Halal Slaughter House!

Boycott Halal - liked by almost 7,000 people. It's the Facebook page of the website Boycott Halal, with the tagline "It's wrong for so many reasons", which is also the collaboration of Infidels United (United we stand in defense of freedom), Boycott Halal Cause, BOYCOTT HALAL in USA, Canada, NZ & Australia.

SAY NO to Halal MEAT at Toby Carvery - targets this restaurant chain.

Say No To Halal !

Say no to halal this is my country and thats not the way we do it

I'll update this list as new campaigns and groups are formed.

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?