The great Al-Hafiz Basheer Ahmad Masri,1 the great Isaac Bashevis Singer,2 the great Roberta Kalechofsky3 will be turning in their graves at the off-the-scale, beyond sickening, wickedly cruel, heartless and devastating atrocities being committed by “Hartshead Meats” in Ashton-under-Lyne – and so many other so-called slaughter ‘houses’ across the UK and the world over.
There is no such thing as “religious” slaughter! There is nothing “religious” about slaughter!
There is nothing “halal” or “kosher” about killing, about this human evil against our sensitive, highly sentient, fully sapient, fellow beings – who are innocent, young and absolutely terrified to boot, and who are suffering horrifically in the process. Our every instinct should be to want to protect them, to want to save them! These are abominations! No-one should ever have to suffer this!
God/YHWH/Allah makes very clear:
“You shall not kill!” (Exodus 20:13)
“You shall not kill!” (Leviticus 22:28)
“You shall not kill!” (Deuteronomy 5:17)
“I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.” (Genesis 1:29)
Jesus makes very clear:
“You shall not kill!” (Matthew 5:21)
“You shall not kill!” (Matthew 19:18)
“Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 7:12)
Animal slaughter in all its terrible forms is evil – but so-called “kosher” and “halal” methods take this evil to a totally unacceptable level. Healthy young animals die in agony, often over 20 long minutes, slowly bleeding to death. And here we have evidence of them being cut up alive, being sadistically tortured and live-butchered, and experiencing off-the-scale, man-made Hell!
This is not “tza’ar ba’alei hayyim”! 4 This is not “rahmah” or “ihsan”! 5 This is the opposite of God’s Way – for those who claim to be people of “Faith”!
And we have not fought tirelessly and non-violently for over 200 years in the UK (and globally) to turn a blind eye to these atrocities! What sort of humans are we? We all have to rise against this!
This has nothing whatsoever to do with racism, with “anti-Semitism” (the irrational hatred of Semitic people: Akkadians, Arabs, Ammonites, Arameans, Canaanites, Edomites, Habesha peoples, Israelites, Jews, Judahites, Moabites, Phoenicians, Samaritans, and others ) or with “Islamophobia” (fear of Islam;) this has to do with ethics, morality and justice, with our hard-fought-for Animal Welfare Act, and, above all, with the most basic right of all our fellow beings to be free from harm! This has to do with our core humanity too, with our hearts, our empathy, our compassion, our understanding.
Nothing, nothing justifies these abominations! There should be no exemptions. These evil practices must be stopped! Yes, tolerance is vital if we are to live in societal harmony, but it should never extend to the intolerable: to violent violations like these – any more than it should to rape, child abuse or the murder or torture of human beings.
Non-violence: the refusal to harm or kill another (or collude in harming and killing through flesh-eating,) is the highest moral and spiritual virtue. For those who are true believers it is also what God/YHWH/Allah/Jesus want from us.
Our fellow beings are beings, Divinely-Created beings (for those who call themselves Believers,) each one a miracle of the Life-force, the holy Spirit which animates us all. They are not “live stock,” “nuggets,” “burgers” or “kebabs,”– and what’s happening inside the slaughterhouses is Satanic. This is absolutely not God’s Way! This is a total desecration of God’s loving, peaceful Way!
Non-harming is the baseline of Divine Law and Divine Law is, and always has been, crystal clear. But the self-serving, animal-sacrificing, flesh-feasting, temple-tax-collecting, ‘atonement’-selling priests and their scribes saw that all this was cleverly changed! And the people of The Book have been following their false path ever since.
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Malachi, Amos, Daniel, other prophets – and Jesus, tried to tell us, (but their teachings were corrupted by those of the Death cult) – and Mahatma Gandhi understood:
- “The life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.”
- “The most violent weapon on earth is the table fork.”
- “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. The more helpless a creature the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of humankind.”
Everyone has a moral responsibility to take action and at the very least to write to their MPs.
It is also high time we started following the plant-based Way of Life, instead of the cruel, bloody, unjust Way of Death. These suffering animals deserve nothing less from us.
LIVE: Protest at Hartshead Meats Abattoir | Manchester | 3rd May
Heidi Stephenson
1 See his seminal book, republished by Lantern in 2022, Animals in Islam. Animals in Islam – Lantern
2 See his short stories The Slaughterer and The Letter Writer and the preface to Steven Rosen’s Food for Spirit: Vegetarianism and the World Religions e.g.
3 See her seminal books Judaism and Animals Rights and Journey of the Liberated Lamb e.g.
4 A Jewish commandment that bans causing the suffering of animals.
5 Ramah is mercy towards all living beings; ihsan is excellence in the treatment of animals, humane treatment, kindness. These are meant to be core Islamic principles.
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