FW: PROTEST---ASMP

[Guest guest]

_____

 

Merritt Clifton [anmlpepl]

Wednesday, December 19, 2007 10:14 AM

Khalid Mahmood

Re: PROTEST---ASMP

 

 

 

I am much vex because millions of cows,oxen,camels,sheep and goats will

slaughter on the day of Eid ul Azha after the HAJ an Saudia Arabia and on

21st,07.in Pakistan and other Muslim and non muslim countaries.This is a

cruel and atrocious massacre of innocent and faithful animals.It is a

genoside of animals.Animal Save Movement Pakistan appeal all the animals

lovers to protest peacefuly and campaign against this massacre of animals.

ASMP not only strongly protest this debacle,but also want to abolish it.

 

 

 

 

I have just returned from the first Middle East Network for Animal

Welfare Conference in Cairo.

 

My most useful observation, I believe, from six days and nights of

extensively canvassing various neighborhoods in different parts of the city,

counting street dogs and feral cats, and noting other potentially helpful

indicators about attitudes toward animals, was that the Eid massacres

attract virtually no public enthusiasm and no active support.

 

In most nations, before most major holidays, the shop windows are

full of nothing else. Every souvenir and every sale is somehow linked in.

There isn't any of that surrounding the Eid in Egypt. Everyone but the

sidewalk sheep-sellers seemed to be avoiding it. Santa Claus appears in

more store windows, even in overwhelmingly poor Islamic neighborhoods,

than any imagery connected with the Eid.

 

Cab drivers I rode with cursed the sheep in the streets and --

knowing nothing about me -- told me that the Eid slaughter is a barbaric

custom that should be abolished. Activists universally told me that they

hide indoors during the Eid, to avoid the killing, but I heard the same

thing from non-activists.

 

At the conference, after several Islamic speakers pointed out that

Mohammed himself attacked many of the customs associated with the Eid, I

stood up during my fundraising presentation & quoted chapter & verse of the

Hadiths to make plain that animal advocates in the Islamic world can attack

the Eid massacres with the highest moral authority.

 

I offered that the Eid massacres are a made-to-order target for

fundraising, in that they occur in public view, and are a well-known

offense & grievance, which continues largely because no one has stood up to

lead opposition.

 

I also noted that Mohammed himself recommended that the Eid should

be a time for people to make cash donations to charity. Thus intensive

fundraising can be done around the Eid, presenting donating to animal

welfare as an alternative to slaughtering animals.

 

I suggested that the professional slaughtermen would not oppose a

campaign that took away their amateur competition, & recited how the U.S.

slaughter industry supported the U.S. Humane Slaughter Act of 1958 for

exactly that reason.

 

Two people in the audience objected. One asserted that the Eid

could not be challenged because parents take their children to see the

killing. I pointed out that some parents take their children to see

bullfights, too, but that hardly means most Spaniards support

bullfighting. On the contrary, most Spaniards support legislation

(recently adopted in some parts of the country) to keep children out of

bullfighting arenas.

 

My observation from photos is that a very, very few parents take

their children to witness Eid slaughters, but mostly what the slaughters

show are young men, and not many at that, fewer in fact than are on the

streets than at other times. Since Egypt is a young nation, the streets

would be full of children if taking children to see the Eid slaughters was

really commonplace.

 

The other person who objected was a visiting European horse expert.

The people he works with are involved in animal agriculture, which is now a

dwindling subset of the Egyptian populace. They are by no means typical of

the Egyptian public, and certainly not of the fast-growing Egyptian middle

class from among whom come the animal advocates and animal welfare donors.

 

I explained from the podium that Egypt -- and much of the rest of

the Islamic world -- has recently passed the transition point at which most

of the society no longer has any direct involvement with animals raised for

meat or used for work, but has not yet reached the point where pet-keeping

becomes commonplace. Right now, most people in Cairo have no regular

interaction with animals--and the Eid is their most frequent source of

exposure.

 

I had been warned before going to Egypt that there were two things I

should not do: walk alone at night in dark alleys, which I ignored because

I am an exceptionally large fellow as well as an exceptionally large damned

fool, and talk about religion, which I did because I didn't see any way

around it, & besides, Islam includes so many wonderfully positive messages

on behalf of animals that ought to be invoked at every appropriate

opportunity.

 

Literally, I preached with the Quran in my hand. The audience was

mostly quiet afterward, but during the next 24 hours small armies of people

kept coming up & mentioning that I had shown them things they knew were

true, but had never before seen from the angle I took.

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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