İyi Bayramlar! Good or Evil?

This week marks the celebration of the Kurban Bayram as what is known here in Turkey. For those who are not too familiar with it, it is a celebration by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the obedience of Prophet Ibrahim for his willingness to sacrifice his son to God. That was a test of faith which he aced before God compromised and allowed him to take a ram as the sacrifical replacement instead.

During this period, Muslims sacrificed animals namely cows, goats and sheeps and feed their meat to the poor as a rememberance of God's blessings and to remember the less fortunate. It is also during this period that I see a few of 'SAVE THE ANIMALS! SAY NO TO CRUELTY! STOP THIS CRAZINESS!' messages at the wallposts of my Facebook contacts, those who aren't Muslims that is. A couple even left rather distasteful remarks about Muslims and their practices leaving some of their Muslim friends greatly offended.

Now I don't understand all these hoo-haa... I find it almost hypocritical that some people choose to profess their sudden love and passion towards animal cruelty. Hypocritical because these are the very same people who enjoy their cheeseburgers, kebabs and steaks with great gusto! Excuse me, where do those meat come from? Guess what, they don't come falling from the sky. Surprise surprise.

Muslims believe in executing minimal pain when slaughtering these animals. The animals are slaughtered along with the recital of God's name and these animals should not be subjected to unnecessary torture and cruelty. There's a technique used in slaughtering these animals to execute as little pain as possible. Another thing to note is these meat are then shared and donated to the poor.

With all these dramas going on by others about this so called cruel practice, I'd suggest for them to start researching themselves on how fast food restaurants like KFC are slaughtering their chickens. Their chickens are being electrocuted and scalded by boiling hot water. Their beaks are also being chopped off and in their slaughterhouse, the chickens are all being cooped in a tiny area with barely any room to move.

I did a lesson on animal cruelty before with my students and one of the videos we watched was on animal cruelty practiced by KFC and I was nearly in tears watching it.

Truth be told, I'm not an animal lover. I don't expect people to agree with everything a religion dictates. However, I'm big on RESPECT and it irks me when people shoot their freaking mouths off especially when it comes to sensitive issues. I could think of thousand and one different religious practices that don't make sense to me but I certainly won't publish it on a public site like Facebook in full view of my other friends of all cultures and beliefs. I respect their beliefs and I can agree to disagree. No religion preaches hatred nor cruelty, only difference is their practice and documentation.

I can however understand vegetarians expressing great displeasure at this coz to begin with, they don't consume animals for pleasure or food. I completely appreciate the rationale behind this and found their disapproval of such practices to be genuine.

If I could sıdetrack a little, this keyboard is really driving me nuts.. I just got a sexy red Samsung netbook here thus it comes with Turkish keyboard and I really have to get used to the new keyboard now coz they have lotsa strange alphabets lıke ı, ş, ö, ç, ğ, ü etc.... so if you see an undotted 'i', you know why!

Till then, iyi bayramlar and enjoy your hols!


xo,
V