Id al-Adha: Idiotic, Cruel and Shocking Annual Muslim Holiday Begins: Insanity Legalized as Sick Voyeurs Get Off on Mass Slaughter

Let me start with this quote taken from the story below: “In abattoirs, some workers sodomize the beasts with knives to drive them into the pens…”

Yes, the idiots are at it again: mass slaughter based on a story of religion. So, others suffer horrendous deaths (and pre-deaths) while idiots actually cheer, take pictures and, as mentioned below, “[l]ittle boys daubed their hands in the blood and spattered one another…”

LET’S JUST SAY THAT IF WE DID THIS IN OUR HOMES, WE’D BE CONSIDERED INSANE.

I could go on, but I’ve decided to post three paragraphs that pretty much sum up the idiotic and horribly cruel holiday in the Muslim world known as Id al-Adha. For the complete story, you will find the text of it and a link to it posted in below these disturbing paragraphs.

“Amateurs slaughter their own sheep at home in many Arab countries, with no special training on how to spare the animals pain. It is common to see men hurling terrified sheep into the backs of trucks, and beating the animals as they herd them to the killing grounds. In abattoirs, some workers sodomize the beasts with knives to drive them into the pens, Ms. Abaza and other activists said.

The scene in Cairo’s working-class Sayyida Zeinab neighborhood Tuesday morning was fairly typical: camels bellowed as blood-soaked butchers wrestled dozens of animals to the ground and slashed their throats for an admiring crowd.

Neighbors leaned out their windows to watch and cheer, or snap cellphone pictures. Little boys daubed their hands in the blood and spattered one another, and teenagers helped remove steaming entrails from the carcasses. Scores of people pressed forward to buy fresh meat for the ritual holiday meal, standing in puddles of clotted gore.”

Article:

Activist Relies on Islam to Fight for Animal Rights

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/world/africa/22egypt.html?_r=1&src=me

CAIRO — It is never easy to be an animal rights activist in the Arab world. But on Id al-Adha, the annual Muslim religious holiday when the streets run red with the blood of slaughtered sheep, cows and camels, it is a nightmare.

Scott Nelson for The New York Times

Amina Abaza, an Egyptian animal rights activist.

“Ah, I can’t stand it!” wailed Amina Abaza, wincing as she drove through a gantlet of hanging carcasses and entrails, with doomed sheep bleating all around her. “Islam is all about compassion, but we don’t practice it!”

An ebullient 55-year-old with a big mane of blond hair, Ms. Abaza has spent a decade campaigning to spare the animals, or at least require more humane slaughtering methods. She has a long way to go.

The scene in Cairo’s working-class Sayyida Zeinab neighborhood Tuesday morning was fairly typical: camels bellowed as blood-soaked butchers wrestled dozens of animals to the ground and slashed their throats for an admiring crowd.

Neighbors leaned out their windows to watch and cheer, or snap cellphone pictures. Little boys daubed their hands in the blood and spattered one another, and teenagers helped remove steaming entrails from the carcasses. Scores of people pressed forward to buy fresh meat for the ritual holiday meal, standing in puddles of clotted gore.

For most Muslims, the holiday, which ended Friday night, is a joyful time with a charitable theme: according to tradition, a third of the slaughtered meat is to be given to relatives, and a third to the poor. It is a welcome gift in Egypt, where the price of meat has been rising and many families cannot afford it.

What bothers Ms. Abaza and other activists is not the principle of Id al-Adha — the Feast of Sacrifice — which commemorates the biblical story in which God allows Abraham to slaughter a ram instead of his own son. Nor do they object to animal slaughter itself (Ms. Abaza is not a vegetarian).

Instead, they complain that many butchers fail to abide even by Islam’s own strictures: that the animal should not be mistreated, and should not see or hear other animals being killed.

Amateurs slaughter their own sheep at home in many Arab countries, with no special training on how to spare the animals pain. It is common to see men hurling terrified sheep into the backs of trucks, and beating the animals as they herd them to the killing grounds. In abattoirs, some workers sodomize the beasts with knives to drive them into the pens, Ms. Abaza and other activists said.

“If you want to give a good image of Muslims and the Koran, why do you do this?” Ms. Abaza said, her operatic voice rising in indignation. “Why are we Muslims the ones known for this kind of behavior?”

Ms. Abaza and a small but growing band of fellow activists have had some impact. In 2006 she helped an Australian reporter film at a slaughterhouse with a hidden camera. The resulting exposé created a scandal in Australia, and soon afterward the Australian government suspended shipping live sheep to Egypt.

That got Ms. Abaza some attention, most of it negative. “People think we are attacking Islam,” she said. “They accuse you of being an American, a Jew, a Freemason.”

It is true that Westerners tend to recoil a bit from the mass slaughter that takes place on Id al-Adha, despite the reality that plenty of animals are slaughtered in the West in ways that make animal rights activists cringe. Muslims can be sensitive about the Western reaction, and Ms. Abaza, who grew up here in a wealthy Francophone family, is an easy target.

When she first started her organization in 2001, the Society for the Protection of Animal Rights in Egypt, her rhetoric was largely borrowed from similar Western groups.

“Then I discovered that there are animal rights in Islam,” she said. “Once we started using the Islamic arguments, they didn’t attack us as much.”

Some religious authorities agree with Ms. Abaza, but they rarely raise their voices, certainly not on the Adha holiday.

“Muslims are passing through a period of degeneration where they are applying the Shariah law circumstantially and moodily,” said Sheik Ahmed al-Baba, a prominent Sunni cleric and member of the Islamic Endowment Council in Lebanon. “Some ordinary people do the slaughtering process and in a wrong way. They don’t have experience, they don’t know we are obliged not to harm the animal.”

In fact, the Koran and the Islamic written traditions that form Shariah, or religious law, specify minimum ages for animals to be slaughtered, and provide details about avoiding any unnecessary pain, Sheik Baba said.

In fairness, those rules are difficult to apply on a large scale. At the Basateen slaughterhouse, near the vast cemetery known as the City of the Dead, butchers stride about in knee-high rubber boots, surrounded by lakes of feces, blood and urine. It was here that the Australian reporter documented animal abuses in 2006.

But the procedures do not appear to have changed. On Monday, one butcher described it this way: “We just throw them on their sides and cut their throats and say ‘Allahu Akbar.’ ” Asked whether the beasts were able to see and hear others being killed, he replied: “Sure, why not?”

As for Ms. Abaza, she chose to celebrate the holiday in her own unique way. She drove to the local sheep market, where she bought a female sheep for 1,000 Egyptian pounds (about $175) and asked the butchers to load it in the back of her S.U.V. The men offered to slaughter it for her, and on hearing that she planned to “rescue” it, they could not contain their mirth. She paid no attention.

“Baaaa! You’re lucky!” she said jauntily, beaming at the animal.

She then drove to her ramshackle farm in the town of Sakara, on the outskirts of Cairo, where she keeps donkeys and sheep as pets. On the way, she groaned as she passed trucks full of sheep headed for slaughter, and dozens of fly-specked animal carcasses hanging in the sun.

“It’s a bloody day,” she said scornfully. “I hate this feast. Millions will be killed.”

Dawlat Magdy and Scott Nelson contributed reporting from Cairo, and Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon.

Ridiculous Religious Festival in Nepal will Slaughter At Least 200,000 Animals - 60,000 Buffaloes, 140,000 Rats, Goats, Ducks, Roosters and Pigeons

Buddha Boy Uses Reason to Attempt to Stop

Here is a link you can visit to sign a petition to this mass slaughter - http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-gadimai/signatures.html

Apparently, this Ancient Nepali Festival takes place once every five years in honor of the goddess Ghadi Mai, also known as Durga. Unbelievably, “[t]he organisers plan to slaughter at least 200,000 animals — including 60,000 buffaloes and 140,000 rats, goats, ducks, roosters and pigeons in the two-day-long Mela.”

One man is attempting to stop this via simple and understandable reason. Palden Dorje, also known as the Buddha Boy due to his “…six year meditation at fifteen to promote world peace in May of 2005. He meditated for at least ten months in front of crowds apparently without sustenance in Bara District’s Ratanpuri before disappearing to continue his meditation in private. He interrupts his meditation once a year to give blessings to pilgrims. He is in the fifth year of his meditation.”

Palden Dorje uses simple logic to show how ridiculous and irrational this festival is:

“The belief that the divine blessings can be achieved through animal sacrifice is a mirage. It goes against the very fact that all living beings are a creation of the god,” he argues, appealing all to refrain from killings or harming the animals.”

“In a recent interview with mediapersons, Bomjan had said that the goddess represented mother of all living beings, including those animals and would never be pleased with the sacrifice of her own children. “Human beings have turned brutal by offering animal sacrifice to the goddesses. This practice must be stopped now,” he said. Geshe Ngima, meanwhile, urged the devotees to offer posy, fruits and vegetables, incense sticks, tika, sweets and coconuts instead of animals and their blood to appease the goddess and help restore peace in the country.”

I’ve posted the story below.

Here is a link you can visit to sign a petition to this mass slaughter - http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-gadimai/signatures.html

Article:

Palden Dorje Plans to Give Blessings to Pilgrims and to Protest Animal Sacrifice at Ancient
Festival

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-331005?ref=feeds%2Flatest

In Nepal, from November 19th to the 24th, 2009 Palden Dorje a.k.a. Ram Bahadur Bomjan (Ram Bomjon) will bless pilgrims at the site of the Gadhi Mai Fair which is likely the largest animal sacrificing festival in the world. He plans this appearance in order to protest the killing of more than 550,000 large animals and countless small ones before they take place on the 24th at the Gadhi Mai Festival near Nijgad in Bara District. This Ancient Nepali Festival takes place once every five years in honor of the goddess Ghadi Mai, also known as Durga. The sacrifices are said to bring good fortune.

Palden Dorje, 19, has been negotiating the ceremony with the leaders of the Ghadi Mai Mela (fair). The priests of the fair are showing an unwillingness to co-operate as the sales of animals at the stalls provide a substantial profit. This year is foreseen to be the largest festival ever with a few million pilgrims, both from Nepal and India.

Palden Dorje became world famous when he began a six year meditation at fifteen to promote world peace in May of 2005. He meditated for at least ten months in front of crowds apparently without sustenance in Bara District’s Ratanpuri before disappearing to continue his meditation in private. He interrupts his meditation once a year to give blessings to pilgrims. He is in the fifth year of his meditation.

Last year, 2008, he gave blessings in November. Approximately 400,000 pilgrims queued in the Halkoriya Jungle to receive his blessings over a 12 day period. He made two speeches in which he urged people to recognize the compassion and loving kindness in their hearts.
This year Palden Dorje is expected to make two speeches at the opening and closing of the blessing ceremony encouraging people to reconsider this cruel practice and to make vegetarian sacrifices instead.

Kosher Jewish Method of Slaughter Known as “Shackle and Hoist,” Exposed For Its Inherent Cruelty: Illegal In the US, It Is Practiced Around Wo

Another religion that has absolutely no concern for animal welfare.

In the “shackle and hoist,” method, the animal is pulled up into the air by one of its hind legs and then dropped onto the ground before its throat is slit.

It should be noted that this method is illegal in the United States. Unfortunately though, Jewish rules dictate that the animal must be upside down when it is slaughter.

This cruelty is mandated (hence, strongly supported) by Israel’s chief rabbis (and hence, Judaism.)

Another sad example of how ignorance in religion leads to no concern for animal cruelty.

Article:

Widespread Slaughter Method Scrutinized for Alleged Cruelty

http://www.forward.com/articles/12666/

By Nathaniel Popper

Wed. Feb 13, 2008

Over the past few decades, kosher meat producers have learned what many others in the industry know: The broad expanses of rural Argentina and Uruguay have everything needed to make great beef, with a stable climate and seemingly endless pastures for grazing. The labor is cheap, and the open pastures on which the cows are raised mean that much of the meat can be marketed with those increasingly alluring tags of “natural” and “free range.”

As a result, a majority of Israel’s beef — and a large portion of America’s kosher meat — now comes from South America. In recent years, every major American kosher meat producer has set up a South American operation.

There is just one, big problem: the way the animals are killed. A majority of the South American slaughterhouses producing kosher meat use a method known as “shackle and hoist,” whereby the cow is pulled up into the air by one of its hind legs and then dropped onto the ground before its throat is slit. The method is illegal under most conditions in the United States, but remains popular among kosher producers elsewhere because it allows the cow to be upside down when it is slaughtered — as is required by Israel’s chief rabbis, the final authorities on kosher meat entering the Jewish state.

The method will be given a public airing this week with the release of a video taken by the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. According to exclusive information given to the Forward, the video was shot in late October 2007 by an undercover investigator during two days of kosher slaughter at a plant in Uruguay. PETA has not yet released the video, but a copy was given to the Forward, which has been investigating the practice since last fall. In it, the animals can be seen hanging from a single leg, struggling in the air and bellowing. Once the animal is put on the ground, it is shown writhing and being restrained by multiple workers who step on it and prod it before the cut.

“It is in a category by itself for badness,” said Temple Grandin, an American animal rights expert who has advised many kosher meat companies, referring to “shackle and hoist.”

“It’s cruel to the animals and it’s dangerous for the employees,” Grandin added.

PETA raised controversy in the past with undercover videos from kosher plants, sparking some to accuse it of anti-Jewish bias — a charge PETA has denied. In this case, PETA appears to have come to an issue already being pursued behind closed doors by certain kosher authorities. Over the last year, the Forward has learned, America’s largest kosher supervision agency, the Orthodox Union, has been concerned enough about “shackle and hoist” slaughter to begin a quiet campaign to have the Israeli rabbinical authorities change it.

“It’s not the kind of system that we want to have, that we would be proud of,” Rabbi Menachem Genack, the CEO of the Orthodox Union’s Kosher Division, told the Forward.

The Rabbinical Assembly of Conservative Judaism passed a ruling in 2000 calling the “shackle and hoist” method a “violation of Jewish law.” In anticipation of the new revelations, the organization reiterated its opposition at a meeting earlier this week.

The plant shown in the PETA video is located in Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo. According to Orthodox Union authorities, the kosher plant in question produces meat for Israel. The Orthodox Union’s top expert on South American meat, Rabbi Seth Mandel, says that even within the problematic realm of “shackle and hoist,” the new video shows an unusually bad case.

“Not only is it unusual — this would not be allowed to go on in plants [slaughtering] for the U.S.,” said Mandel.

Despite the concerns of the Orthodox Union, the organization still certifies kosher plants in South America that use “shackle and hoist”; indeed most kosher meat entering the United States from South America is produced using the method, according to Genack. Genack said change has been slow to come because the Israelis are the major market force in South America and thus dictate the standards of meat production in the region.

“This will not succeed unless we have the support of the Israeli companies, and that requires a push from the chief rabbis there,” Genack said.

The willingness of the Orthodox Union to continue to allow “shackle and hoist” has already drawn fire from PETA.

“I think it’s shameful,” said Aaron Gross, a PETA consultant who has worked on the organization’s projects involving kosher slaughter. “Anything they’ve been doing to improve the situation, I applaud. I just wish they would do it more publicly.”

Over the last year, Genack said, he has had numerous private talks about this issue with both Rabbi Yona Metzger, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, and Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the Sephardic chief rabbi. In late 2007, Metzger and Amar convened a meeting of rabbis in Israel to discuss the issue, according to people involved. Afterward, Genack said he received a letter in which he was assured that the Israeli chief rabbis were looking to change the practice. Just last week, Genack said he spoke with Metzger on the phone about pushing for change.

Partially at Genack’s insistence, the chief rabbis invited a veterinarian who specializes in kosher slaughter, Rabbi I.M. Levinger, to attend their meeting last fall. Levinger told the Forward that the issue was discussed, but that the chief rabbis were hesitant to commit to anything.

“They want to see what they can reach with recommendations,” Levinger said. “I feel that this will not be much, I am afraid.”

PETA has said that they have tried to speak with the Israeli chief rabbinate in the past, but have not heard back. When reached by the Forward on Tuesday, the head of the Israeli chief rabbinate’s import division, Rabbi Ezra Harari, said he was not familiar with the issue and declined to comment.

Rabbinical authorities say that the chief rabbis mandate that cows be upside down because the blood drains faster and the animal cannot fall on the knife.

The current PETA campaign builds on the publicity the group garnered with an undercover video released in 2004 from America’s largest kosher slaughterhouse, AgriProcessors, which is located in Iowa. AgriProcessors is the only kosher meat producer in America that is certified to export meat to Israel. The company uses what is known as a rotating pen to meet the Israeli standard that the animal be upside down when it is slaughtered.

AgriProcessors’ use of the rotating pen was criticized in 2005. Ironically, it is the rotating pen — a mechanized corral that holds the animal while it is flipped over — that many animal rights activists see as the best alternative to the “shackle and hoist” method in South America. In fact, in South America, AgriProcessors has led the way, being the first and only kosher company to install a rotating pen in its slaughterhouse, according to the Orthodox Union. This has earned it praise from PETA.

“I think it’s great that AgriProcessors has taken that step,” said PETA’s Gross. “It shows you how bringing this stuff out in the open motivates change.” AgriProcessors did not respond to requests for comment.

The kosher rush into South America began in 1950, according to the Israeli chief rabbinate. Today, close to 60,000 tons of meat come into Israel each year from South America.

South America’s biggest draw is its cheap labor, which is also a primary reason that companies opt for the “shackle and hoist” method. The technique relies on little technology but a comparatively large number of laborers to restrain the cattle.

Most American companies use their South American product for processed meats like salami and bologna — a choice driven in part because the cows are raised on grass, which does not make the meat as fatty as corn-fed American beef. Recently, though, grass-fed beef has taken on its own allure with the explosion of demand for free-range meat. Both kosher authorities and animal rights activists say that before the slaughtering begins, conditions in South America make for more pleasant living conditions than in America, where most cattle are confined to feed lots for their entire lives.

“In Uruguay, the animals are blessed,” said Mandel, the rabbi who oversees meat production in South America. “They are lolling outside — plenty of grass to eat. There is nothing to mistreat them — until the day they are loaded on a truck.”

That final step — the “shackle and hoist” — was common in America in the early 20th century, when labor was cheaper and before Congress passed the Humane Methods of Livestock Slaughter Act.

In American kosher slaughterhouses today, the Orthodox Union mandates standing slaughter, which it promotes partially for humane reasons.

The Israeli animal rights group, Concern for Helping Animals in Israel, has recently written to both chief rabbis questioning whether the South American practice could be compatible with Jewish law.

The letter, which was written by Rabbi Adam Frank, an activist with the organization, asked: “Since less painful and more humane methods of animal restraint and treatment exist and are used in the kosher slaughter process, is the Shackling & Hoisting of a conscious animal an unnecessarily cruel practice, thus defining it as prohibited under Jewish law?”

Officials with Frank’s organization said they have not heard back from the chief rabbinate.