Was Jesus a Vegetarian?

[Guest guest]

[Moderator's note:

Normally on AAPN we try to avoid discussion of religion as they are not within

the AAPN remit and can be very divisive. But I think it is worthwhile for

everyone to read this article - however, please keep any subsequent discussions

to private e-mail exchanges.

John.]

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kamran-pasha/was-jesus-a-vegetarian_b_276141.html

 

Was Jesus a Vegetarian?

 

Kamran Pasha

Hollywood filmmaker, author of " Mother of the Believers "

 

 

Posted: September 3, 2009 07:19 AM

 

 

I am not a vegetarian or a vegan. But like most people of conscience,

I was sickened and horrified to see the recent video taken by animal

rights activists of baby chicks being ground alive at an egg hatchery.

Seeing such cruel and heartless treatment of living beings has

undoubtedly caused some of us carnivores to at least take a moment to

consider the dark truths behind how animals are processed for food in

the modern world.

 

Indeed, human beings throughout history have questioned the morality

of animal slaughter, and religious traditions such as Hinduism and

Buddhism have long been the home for those who believe that killing

and consuming sentient animals is barbaric. Religious vegetarianism is

commonplace in the East, but is not considered mainstream in most

Western faith communities.

 

And yet, after lengthy research into the historical record, I have

become convinced that Jesus Christ himself was in all likelihood a

vegetarian, and that vegetarianism was probably a central tenet of the

early Christian community founded by his disciples. In fact, there is

evidence that Christ's opposition to animal sacrifice at the Jewish

Temple may have been the triggering event that led to the Crucifixion.

 

Yes, I know. This sounds preposterous. But stay with me, and let me

present the historical evidence before you make a final judgment.

 

Christian and Muslim views of Jesus

 

Before I begin, let me state that I am a Muslim, so already my views

on Jesus are not the same as those of my Christian brothers and

sisters. Jesus is a pivotal figure in both Christianity and Islam, and

both religions consider themselves to contain the true teachings of

Christ. The primary differences between the two faiths arise over his

identity and message.

 

For Christians, Jesus is a divine being, the Son of God, who took

human form in order to experience martyrdom, death and resurrection as

part of God's plan for redemption. For Christians, Christ's death on

the cross is an act of cosmic blood sacrifice - he took upon himself

the sins of mankind, and those who believe in him are cleansed of

their sins through vicarious atonement. Salvation comes through faith

in Christ's redemptive sacrifice.

 

For Muslims, Jesus was a human being, a prophet and a teacher, who was

sent by God to guide humanity. Muslims believe that Jesus never wanted

to be worshipped as a deity, and that his message was very simple:

" Worship God, your Lord and mine, and follow my example. " There is no

doctrine of vicarious atonement in Islam, as Muslims believe Jesus and

all of God's messengers taught individual moral responsibility. Muslim

belief is that the central teachings of Christianity - the divinity of

Christ and his death as a sacrificial atonement - are later pagan

inventions that Jesus himself would have rejected. Salvation for

Muslims comes through what they consider the central teachings of

Jesus and all prophets - belief in One God and living an ethical life.

 

Discussions of the differences in Christian and Muslim approaches to

Jesus can and do fill volumes, and I can only scratch the surface of

this theological controversy here. But I state these points above as a

disclaimer. As a Muslim, my personal views of Jesus are already

different from those of my Christian neighbors. As a result, I am more

likely to question the official Church stance on Christ's life and

teachings than those who accept the Christian vision. I read early

Church histories with a different attitude than a believing Christian

would, and I am more likely to give credence to historical accounts

that are today deemed heretical by the Church.

 

And this skeptical approach toward the official version of Christian

history has led me to a deep personal conviction - based on the

historical sources - that Christ's message was not just about loving

your fellow human beings, but that he actually was deeply concerned

that his followers show compassion toward animals.

 

I came to this conclusion while researching my next book, a novel on

the birth of Christianity. My first novel, Mother of the Believers,

about the birth of Islam from the perspective of Prophet Muhammad's

wife Aisha, has been a success. I wanted to follow up with a similar

book about Jesus based on the early historical sources. I decided to

set aside my own pre-conceived beliefs about Jesus as a Muslim and

treat the sources with objectivity. I wanted to present Jesus as early

Christians likely saw him, even if that understanding was different

from my own faith.

 

And in the process of examining the New Testament and early historical

sources about Jesus, I became shocked to learn that perhaps neither

Christians nor Muslims today truly understand what Jesus was about.

The evidence of religious vegetarianism in the early Christian

community was so overwhelming that I was forced to consider why this

was not one of the issues that divide Christians and Muslims in

theology. Most Christians and most Muslims are not vegetarian and most

people in both faiths would be startled by the suggestion that Jesus

and the early Christians were staunch vegetarians.

 

Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity: James versus Paul

 

In order to get to the point that Jesus appears to have been a

vegetarian according to early Christian sources, I must first give a

basic explanation of the historical process by which the religious

movement we now call Christianity came together. There are many

sources for the following historical interpretation, but the most

readable and well argued is by Prof. Barrie Wilson, a respected

biblical scholar at York University in Toronto. His work How Jesus

Became Christian provides a detailed examination of the evolution of

Christian thought that I summarize below.

 

My investigation into the life of Jesus began by examining the first

theological dispute that arose in the Christian community after the

earthly mission of Jesus. Interestingly, there is little controversy

over how Jesus lived. Most scholars, both secular and Christian, would

likely accept the notion that Jesus in his lifetime was a practicing

Jew, one who adhered to the Torah, the Law of Moses, even if he had

some different interpretations of specific legal points than other

Jewish teachers. That meant that Jesus was circumcised, prayed

ritually every day according to ancient Jewish practices, worshipped

at the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, observed the Sabbath and major

Jewish festivals such as Passover and Yom Kippur, and adhered to

kosher laws regarding which foods were acceptable and which weren't

(Jesus would not have eaten pork, for example).

 

This last point was not controversial in his lifetime, but became a

major issue later when an increasing number of Gentiles (who had no

such food restrictions) began to convert to Christianity. But during

his lifetime, and for several years afterward, the followers of Jesus

did not see themselves as creating a new religion. They were Jews who

believed that Jesus was their teacher and leader, and the Acts of the

Apostles discusses how the early Christians continued to worship at

the Jewish Temple like other Jews, apparently unaware of the doctrine

that Christ's death and resurrection removed the need to observe these

ritual Jewish practices. This early " Jewish Christian " community was

led by James the Just, identified in the New Testament as the younger

brother of Jesus, and supported by well-known disciples like Peter and

John

 

According to contemporary historian Flavius Josephus, James the Just

was highly respected by the Jewish community of Jerusalem for his

righteousness and adherence to the Law of Moses. And yet modern

Christians do not consider adherence to the Mosaic Law necessary or

perhaps even virtuous. In fact most Christians today would be

hard-pressed to name a handful of the 613 commandments that form the

backbone of the Torah. So as I researched my novel, the question

naturally arose - how did Christianity transform from a community of

Torah-observant Jews into a Gentile religion that renounced the Law of

Moses?

 

The answer to that question comes in the figure of one man whose

vision of the risen Christ changed the history of the world. The

Apostle Paul. The story of Paul's conversion from a persecutor of

Christianity to its greatest champion is famed in Church history and

doctrine. On his way to arrest Christian fugitives in Damascus, Paul

claimed to have a direct personal vision of Christ (whom he had never

actually met during his lifetime). The Acts of the Apostles and Paul's

own letters differ in the exact details of this profound spiritual

event, but the end result was clear. Paul said that he had been given

a direct revelation of Christ's gospel and began to preach his

understanding of Christ to Gentiles.

 

For Paul, Christ was more than a Jewish teacher and political leader,

as the Jerusalem community around James believed. Christ was a Divine

Being who had sacrificed his life to cleanse the world of sin. It is

in Paul's letters that we first find the doctrines of Christ's

divinity and vicarious atonement (the Gospels would be written later,

when Paul's ideas had become prevalent among Christians). Paul taught

his followers that obedience to the ritual law of Moses was no longer

necessary - indeed it was a " curse " (Galatians 3:10-13). All that was

needed to be a Christian was faith in Christ and his redemptive

sacrifice.

 

These ideas have of course become the bedrock of modern Christianity.

But what is fascinating is that Paul's letters, the earliest Christian

documents (preceding even the Gospels by decades), reveal that Paul's

vision of the Christ was not the same as the Jesus known to his family

and disciples.

 

The Jesus Movement (Jews who saw Jesus as their teacher and leader)

was based in Jerusalem at the time, while Paul was preaching to

Gentiles throughout Asia Minor (modern Turkey), apparently without any

authority from the disciples to do so. Indeed Paul proudly claims in

his letters that he did not need anyone's authority to preach and that

his Gospel came directly from Christ himself (Galatians 1:1).

 

Not surprisingly, his proclamation of speaking on behalf of Christ did

not sit well with the Jerusalem Christians who had known Jesus

personally and could not reconcile Paul's vision of the antinomian

Christ with the Torah-observant rabbi who had led them. According to

Paul's Letter to the Galatians, James the Just sent envoys to check up

on him and what he was preaching (Galatians 2:12). And when these

envoys heard his doctrines, especially with regard to faith in Christ

removing the need for Christians to follow Jewish dietary laws, all

hell broke loose. As Paul himself describes the incident in Galatians,

he had a shouting match with Peter and other disciples, and was very

much the odd man out (Galatians 2:11-13)

 

Several of Paul's letters in the New Testament were written to respond

to the critiques of these Jewish Christians, who claimed Paul was

misguided and perhaps even lying about his encounter with Christ (see

Galatians 1:20, 2 Corinthians 11:31, 1 Timothy 2:7 where Paul

repeatedly insists that he is not lying, since clearly this is a

charge being regularly made against him). Indeed, the modern Christian

notion that Paul was on good terms with the disciples who had known

Jesus in his lifetime is simply not borne out in Paul's own letters.

While the Acts of the Apostles, written years later by Paul's

followers, often portrays the debates between James and Paul as

cheerful disagreements between brothers, Paul's own letters show that

their differences were intense and volatile. It was as if the two

movements were actually competing religions rather than branches of

the same faith.

 

How Pauline Christianity Triumphed

 

But if Paul's vision of Christ had little support from the people who

actually knew Jesus, how did it become the basis for Christianity? The

answer lies in the tragedy of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70

C.E. The followers of Jesus the man were centered around Jerusalem,

while the followers of Christ the God were scattered throughout the

Roman Empire. The Jewish Christian community suffered a major blow

when their leader James the Just was murdered a in 62 C.E., and when

the Roman legions destroyed Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple a few

years later, the surviving Jewish Christians fled to Pella in modern

Jordan.

 

The death of James and the destruction of Jerusalem crippled the Jesus

Movement and placed it dangerously close to extinction. According to

4th century Christian history Eusebius, the blood relatives of Jesus

(the Desposyni) were hunted down as political threats by the Roman

Emperors Domitian and Trajan and the people who had known and followed

Jesus in his lifetime rapidly became an endangered species.

 

Paul's Christ Movement, on the other hand, was phenomenally

successfully. Untouched by the destruction of Jerusalem, the Gentile

based religion easily eclipsed the struggling Jewish movement that had

been its predecessor (and competitor). Paul's vision of Christ the

Divine Savior had many similarities to popular religions of the Roman

Empire, including the mystery schools of Egypt and the cult of

Mithras. The ideas of a Divine Man incarnating, dying and being

reborn, were already popular mystical doctrines in these communities,

and it was not hard to replace Mithras or Osiris with Christ. And the

end result was that over centuries, Paul's idiosyncratic view of Jesus

became the orthodox Christian line, simply because it survived and

thrived.

 

Most Christian scholars would not dispute the basic outline of the

history as I have laid it out here. Understandably, their view would

be that the " correct " vision of Christianity survived, guided by God's

hand through history. It is not for me to dispute anyone's faith, and

the reader must decide how to interpret the meaning of these events

themselves. I had already known the basics of this historical

framework when researching my novel. And as a Muslim, I was interested

in learning more about these Jewish Christians led by Christ's brother

James, as their vision of Jesus more closely fits my own.

 

And it was in the process of researching these Jewish Christians that

I was startled to discover that there was a consistent theme in their

teachings. Along with the belief that Jesus was God's servant and a

human teacher, they had a passionate commitment to vegetarianism.

 

That struck me as odd. Islam is not a vegetarian religion, and if I

had been looking for historical evidence to support my Muslim

religious beliefs in the teachings of the Jewish Christians, I

certainly found these accounts quite jarring. But the evidence is

undeniable. One of the central themes that set Jewish Christian groups

apart from Pauline Christians was their belief that Jesus rejected

animal sacrifice and the consumption of meat.

 

The Ebionites and the Survival of Jewish Christianity

 

After the destruction of Jerusalem, the surviving Jewish Christians

continued under a variety of names according to early Church

historians. The most common name for these groups was the Ebionites,

from the Hebrew word Evyonim, which means " the poor. " This is an

apparent reference to the many sayings of Jesus where he consistently

honors and elevates the poor. ( " Blessed are you who are poor, for

yours is the Kingdom of God " - Luke 6:20). Other names for these

groups include Nazarenes and Elkasites. They seem to have developed

some minor theological distinctions among them - some accepted the

miraculous virgin birth of Jesus (as Islam does) while denying it made

him in any way divine, while others said Jesus was the natural son of

Joseph and Mary.

 

According to Church historians like Iraneus (2nd century CE), Origen

(3rd century CE), Epiphanius and Eusebius (4th century CE), groups

like the Ebionites had their own Gospel written in Hebrew (or possibly

Aramaic, the language Jesus actually spoke). That in and of itself is

fascinating, since none of the canonical Gospels that became part of

the New Testament were written in Hebrew or Aramaic. They were written

in Koine Greek, the common language of the eastern Roman Empire (with

regrets to Mel Gibson, whose insistence in having the Roman soldiers

and Pontius Pilate speak Latin was one of the many historical

inaccuracies in his Passion of the Christ).

 

So even for a Christian believer, there is the problem that the words

of Jesus as recorded in the canonical Gospels are translations from

the language he actually spoke. There is already a language barrier

that separates us from the historical Jesus. We do not today possess

authentic gospels in Aramaic or Hebrew, and so we can never know for

sure if Christ's words were properly translated into Greek, and the

nuances and meanings of his mother tongue are lost to history. And yet

it is remarkable that the Ebionites and other Jewish Christians did

possess such gospels, written in the language of Christ, suggesting

that their link to the teachings of the historical Jesus is closer

than those of their rivals.

 

Based on this Gospel, the Ebionites rejected what was becoming

mainstream Christianity and denounced the letters of Paul as false

teachings. The Ebionites faithfully observed the Law of Moses,

claiming that in doing so, they were following the example not only of

James, Peter and the disciples, but of Jesus himself. And according to

Epiphanius, the Ebionites were vegetarian, rejecting animal sacrifice

as immoral, claiming again that they were following the teachings of

Jesus himself.

 

In the Panarion, his epic treatise against heresy, Epiphanius gives us

many details about the Ebionite lifestyle. He says that the Ebionites

claimed that the Apostle Peter had been a vegetarian and had ordered

his followers to abstain from eating meat. In the Ebionite Gospel,

they quote Jesus as saying " I came to abolish sacrifices, and unless

you cease from sacrificing, my anger will not cease from you. " The

reference is to the practice of animal sacrifice in the Jewish Temple,

where thousands of animals were ritually slaughtered every year as

offerings to God, the meat being shared with the Priests.

 

The Ebionites claimed that Jesus was horrified by cruelty to animals

and that one of the primary aspects of his mission was to abolish the

practice of ritual slaughter. Their argument was that Temple

sacrifices were an innovation and had no basis in the authentic Law of

Moses, and Jesus was sent to restore the Torah as Moses had practiced

it. To the extent that the Jewish scriptures appeared to endorse

animal sacrifice by the Priests (cf. the Book of Leviticus), they

claimed that such passages were forgeries inserted by the Priesthood

itself to promote its livelihood (the falsification of parts of the

Bible would be a central claim of Islam centuries later).

 

While we do not possess the full text of the Ebionite Gospel, which

along with other " heretical " books was banned by the Church in the 4th

century, we do have some Ebionite apocryphal writings such as the

Clementine Homilies and the Recognitions of Clement. These documents

(known to scholars as the " pseudo-Clementines " ) are Ebionite stories

about the early Christians. They purport to be the writings of

Clement, the first bishop of Rome, ie -- the first Catholic Pope

appointed by Peter. (It is remarkable that the Ebionites believed Pope

Clement was an opponent of Paul, the man today credited as a founding

leader of Christianity in Rome!)

 

The Homilies and the Recognitions contain accounts of Peter's mission

and his disputes with a false teacher named " Simon Magus " who is

misleading people about Jesus (Simon Magus is clearly an Ebionite

code-name for Paul). And in the pseudo-Clementine literature, Peter is

portrayed as a vegetarian who only eats bread and olives, and avoids

eating " dead flesh. "

 

After having been confronted with this wealth of information about the

Ebionites, who have a strong historical claim to be a continuation of

the Jewish movement started by Jesus and subsequently led by James the

Just, it became evident to me that vegetarianism and compassionate

treatment of animals was an important part of early Christian thought.

 

Evidence of Ethical Vegetarianism in Mainstream Christianity

 

But a critic of this line of reasoning can rightly raise the fact that

the Ebionites were rejected as heretics by mainstream Christianity. So

what if they were vegetarians? They were wrong about everything else

about Christ, they must be wrong about that too. So I decided to see

if there was evidence from mainstream Christian sources that support

vegetarian practices in the early Christian community.

 

And to my surprise, I found them.

 

Hegesippus, a 2nd century orthodox Christian historian, wrote of James

the Just, the brother of Jesus:

 

" After the apostles, James the brother of the Lord surnamed the Just

was made head of the Church at Jerusalem. Many indeed are called

James. This one was holy from his mother's womb. He drank neither wine

nor strong drink, ate no flesh, never shaved or anointed himself with

ointment or bathed... "

 

There it was. James the Just, according to an early orthodox Christian

did not eat meat. Nor did he drink alcohol. According to Epiphanius,

the Ebionites also rejected alcohol and used water for communion,

further strengthening their claim to be continuing the practice of

James, who was the brother of Jesus and his appointed successor. As

biblical scholar Robert Eisenman points out in his monumental work

James the Brother of Jesus, " Who and whatever James was, so was

Jesus. "

 

So if James really was a vegetarian, and James and Paul disagreed

about the proper understanding of Christ's teachings (especially with

regard to what foods a Christian should eat), then it should not be

surprising if Paul had a problem with vegetarianism. I went back to

examine Paul's writings to see if he had any opinions on vegetarians.

 

And remarkably, he did.

 

In Romans 14:1-2, Paul denigrates those Christians who " eat only

vegetables " saying that their " faith is weak. " So it is clear that

vegetarianism was common among Christians in Paul's day, to the extent

that he had to refute their claim that refraining from meat was an act

of piety. The fact that Paul has to make this point means that ethical

vegetarianism was being presented as a moral requirement to be a

Christian! And, as we have seen, Paul's vision of Christ was opposed

to rules and restrictions around food, to the extent that he found

himself in conflict with James and Peter on the subject.

 

Was The Crucifixion the Result of Christ's Opposition to Animal Sacrifice?

 

The evidence that Jesus was a vegetarian, or at least early Christians

who knew him were vegetarians, was compelling. But it seemed to be a

minor doctrinal point, with little historical significance.

 

And then I came across a remarkable book called The Lost Religion of

Jesus: Simple Living and Nonviolence in Early Christianity by Keith

Akers, which posits a shocking thesis - that the central event of the

Christian faith, the Crucifixion, was predicated upon Christ's

willingness to fight for animal rights.

 

Akers is a committed vegetarian and he makes no apologies for the fact

that he is evangelizing vegetarianism as a moral code for others. And

some who read his book might find his persistence on the subject

annoying. Regardless, the book truly makes compelling arguments that

vegetarianism was intrinsic to Christ's message of love and compassion

for the world, and that gentleness toward animals is a prominent theme

in Christ's parables. Akers explains in greater depth the historical

processes that I have detailed above, and the book is valuable for

anyone who wishes to understand how the vision of Paul differed from

that of other early Christians, and why Paul's vision ultimately

triumphed to become Christian orthodoxy.

 

But for me, the most powerful argument that Akers makes is that

Christ's rejection of animal sacrifice brought him into direct

conflict with the Temple Priests, leading to Christ's arrest and trial

under Pontius Pilate. Akers has the remarkable ability to point out

evidence in the biblical texts that is hiding in plain site.

 

Most Christians would agree that the immediate event that led to

Christ's arrest under the charge of sedition was his confrontation at

the Temple. The famous scene where Jesus overturns the tables of the

moneychangers is usually the focal point of Christian tellings of the

story. Christ's attack on Temple business practices such as converting

foreign exchange was seen as a threat to the Sadducee Priests' power,

thus resulting in their willingness to turn him over to Pilate on the

claim of fomenting rebellion against Rome.

 

And yet, as Akers points out, the moneychangers were a small part of

the Temple scene. It is unlikely that the Priests would have felt

directly threatened by an attack on unscrupulous traders overcharging

pilgrims on exchange rates. But the Gospel accounts actually list

moneychangers as one of several groups that Jesus drove out of the

Temple - and they are not the first in line.

 

" Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and

selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the

benches of those selling doves. " (Matthew 21:12)

 

The primary reference is to those who were " buying and selling. " What

does that mean? That means the huge business of animal sales for

sacrifice! The Temple was both a site of worship and a butcher shop.

Jesus was disrupting the Temple's primary revenue stream - the trade

of animals for ritual slaughter.

 

That Jesus was primarily concerned with animal sacrifice in the Temple

is made explicitly clear in the Gospel of John:

 

" When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to

Jerusalem. In the Temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and

doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a

whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and

cattle; he scattered the coins of the moneychangers and overturned

their tables. To those who sold doves he said, " Get these out of here!

How dare you turn my Father's house into a market! " His disciples

remembered that it is written: " Zeal for your house will consume me. "

(John 2:13-17)

 

In the Gospel of John, Jesus physically drives herds of animals out of

the Temple courtyard using a whip. It is an incredibly powerful visual

image. Yet in all the years of that I have listened to the story of

Jesus at the Temple, I have never heard anyone focus on this

compelling scene. The overturning of the currency tables seems to be

what is stuck in the Christian consciousness, and yet the most

dramatic and chaotic event in this incident is clearly the freeing of

the animal herds.

 

As Akers argues, the direct attack on the Priests' principal source of

livelihood, the animal sacrifices, could not be ignored. The Priests

had to respond to the threat Jesus posed to their power, and they did.

And the outcome changed the course of history.

 

What Does This Mean For Us Today?

 

If we accept that Jesus of Nazareth, the divine Savior of Christianity

and the human Prophet of Islam, cared so deeply for animals that he

would endanger his own life to end cruelty against them, what does

that mean for us today?

 

Neither mainstream Christianity nor mainstream Islam endorses

vegetarianism as a preferred lifestyle. But Akers makes a compelling

argument that spiritual vegetarians have always existed within the

Christian community, and that their voice of compassion toward animals

is one that will never be silenced.

 

And Akers suggests convincingly that the Ebionites were ultimately

absorbed into Islam, which shared most of their views about Jesus. And

their vegetarian beliefs continued to influence Sufis, the mystics of

Islam. Many Muslims would be surprised to learn that Rabia

al-Adawiyya, a beloved female Sufi saint, was a vegetarian. And many

Islamic legends around Jesus portray him as an ascetic who avoided

meat and was deeply concerned for the welfare of animals as well as

humans.

 

And so these teachings of Jesus continue to live on.

 

I think it is important to remember in a modern mechanized world,

where animals are slaughtered in horrific ways using cruel and

monstrous machines, that we do have a responsibility to other

creatures on this earth. We have a duty to them, to our Creator, and

to our own humanity, to show animals mercy and compassion. Watching

beautiful little chicks ground alive by gears and blades should make

us question who we are and what being human means.

 

On a personal note, I do not plan to renounce the consumption of meat.

But I now have a preference to eat meat that has been slaughtered in

as humane a way as possible. In both Judaism and Islam, there are

ancient rules of sacrifice meant to lessen an animal's suffering and

bring a quick and merciful death. Called shechita in Jewish kosher

laws and zabiha in Islam's halal rules, these slaughter practices were

developed in a primitive desert world where human survival should have

been the only concern. And yet these ancient nomads chose to think

about the welfare of animals, to feel empathy for the taking of their

lives for food, and to find ways to do so as mercifully as they could.

The barbaric practices of modern slaughterhouses violate the merciful

traditions of Judaism, Islam, and yes, Christianity, and the holy

figures of our traditions would undoubtedly reject such contemporary

cruelties.

 

I would venture to guess that many Jews and Muslims living in the West

today are lax about eating only meat that is kosher or halal. I know

that is true in my own case. But after seeing some of the horrifying

images from modern secular slaughterhouses, perhaps it is time for all

of us to look into our religious histories and take seriously the

traditions that emphasize mercy toward animals.

 

Maybe it is time to look back in order to move forward.

 

Kamran Pasha is a Hollywood filmmaker and the author of Mother of the

Believers, a novel on the birth of Islam as told by Prophet Muhammad's

wife Aisha (Atria Books; April 2009). For more information please

visit: http://www.kamranpasha.com

 

Follow Kamran Pasha on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kamranpasha

 

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