Just literally I watched OKJA and my tears keep watered my eyes. Appreciation to the wonderful friendship between animals and human. How much the ALF guys put a mission to rescue OKJA “The miracle Pig” and other animals from their misery as a food, pets or just exhibit object at the zoos. how hard the ALF guys try to reduce their footprint on earth by stop eating animals. Then something captured my mind and my soul.
As a Muslim who has certain rules of consuming meat in my religion. I feel very blessed on how we’ve been thought from the beginning how to honor what we are going to consumed for our body. Most of you will be familiar with Halal foods or permissible foods term.
Let’s talk about the halal meat in particular. Well before that for you to know, I’m not the expert of Islamic law or anything. I know all this by my daily experiences as a Muslim and my own deeper research on this topic. Alright, let’s talk about Halal meat, what kind of animals that we are allowed to consume: Sheep, goats, cows, buffalos, camels, deer, chickens, turkeys, goose, ducks, ostriches, quails, pigeons, partridges, everything from the sea and other. I will list all kinds of animals which Haram (forbid) for Muslim.
Not only stop on the animal kinds that Halal for us, but how we treated them and the well being of the animals. As we believe all the things we have, has come as a blessing from Allah, we cannot be disrespectful towards them. So Muslim has rules and guidance on how we slaughter the animals to be respectful and gain a good benefits from their sacrifices to our body.
- The animal to be slaughtered must be from the categories that are permitted for Muslims to eat.
- The animal must be alive and healthy at the time of slaughter.
- The animal must be slaughtered by the use of a sharp knife. The knife must not kill due to its weight. If it kills due to the impact the meat may not be permissible.
- The windpipe (throat), food-tract (oesophagus) and the two jugular veins must be cut.
- The slaughtering must be done in one stroke without lifting the knife. The knife should not be placed and lifted when slaughtering the animal.
- Slaughtering must be done by a sane adult Muslim. Animals slaughtered by a Non Muslim will not be Halal.
- The name of Allah must be invoked (mentioned) at the time of slaughtering by saying:Bismillah Allahu Akbar. (In the Name of Allah; Allah is the Greatest.)
- If at the time of slaughtering the name of anyone else other than Allah is invoked (i.e. animal sacrificed for him/her), then the meat becomes Haram “unlawful.”
- The head of the animal must not be cut off during slaughtering but later after the animal is completely dead, even the knife should not go deep into the spinal cord.
- Skinning or cutting any part of the animal is not allowed before the animal is completely dead.
- Slaughtering must be made in the neck from the front (chest) to the back.
- The slaughtering must be done manually not by a machine, as one of the conditions is the intention, which is not found in a machine.
- The slaughtering should not be done on a production line where pigs are slaughtered. Any instrument used for slaughtering pigs should not be used in the Halal slaughtering.
- Last but not least The animal should not see other animals being slaughter
The last point of the rules that really fascinating for me. How much Islam teaches us to be respectful to everything Allah has created. As I believe creature in this world have their purpose, have feeling and they understand what happened around them. To see other cow to be slaughter before them may put them in stressful situation. However there are still debate among people out there regarding this slaughtering method or even eat animal at all. As a scientific reference maybe you could open this Link.
Back to my realizations about Halal ways of slaughtering and the movie OKJA. If you might watched already, the moment they show what happened in that factory and how they kill the animals, it was brutal. If your read the link I share before, the Halal ways of slaughtering animals is the best and least pain that animals could feels and it have been proved by science.
And how about ALF mission on reduce the footprint on earth. I agree with some of their believe but not until restricted my self on not eating animals at all. I totally agree on fighting the mistreated animals at zoos, home, labs. Because their purpose in this world is not that. For example Zoos, keeping the animal not in their natural habitat but captive in the name of education so we (common people) can see the lion in real life but not in their actual way of life. Or labs uses animals to prove that certain chemical maybe or maybe not harmful for living things.
But why im not straight turn my self to vegan? Because form our anatomy, lets see inside our mouth. We have teeth a complete sets if compare to herbivore and carnivore. Means Allah created us as creature that eats plants and meat for our diets. And when we stop eating meat we will lost the source of some vitamins like b12 and kind of proteins that our body needs to work. However the problem on this day society is we eat animal products not in the right amount that our body needs. We attend to eat meat more instead of plan, makes the demand on meat products high, too much mass production meat it chained to overuse of water to grow the animals, the used of hormone that makes them grow faster, produce more eggs or milk. And this is the things we should look trough, study and solve.
SO WE STOP EATING OURSELVES TO DEATH
Animals that not allowed to be consumed by Muslim:
- The flesh of the wild and predatory animals which catch their hunt by their molar teeth and paws and tear them into pieces and fight are haram (prohibited) and cannot be eaten; such as wolves, bears, lions, tigers, hyenas, leopards, martens, squirrels, elephants, monkeys, foxes, weasels, cats and dogs, etc…
- The flesh of the birds which catch and hunt their preys by their claws and regarded as naturally detestable is also haram or tahriman makrooh (strictly abominable). They are animals such as kites, ravens, eagles, vultures, bats, sparrow hawks, falcons and jays.
- The flesh of the animals which are naturally malignant and disgusting cannot be eaten, either. Mice, moles, hedgehogs, lizards, scorpions, snakes, frogs, tortoises, snails, worms, bees, flies, caterpillars, insects, etc.
- The flesh of the animals such as chickens, sheep, cows which have eaten unclean things cannot be eaten either before a period of time for cleaning passes. For that reason, the animals which have eaten those kinds of dirty things are detained in a place and they are nourished by clean nutriments. That period of confinement is three days for chickens, ten days for cows and camels and four days for sheep. The flesh of the animals which are fed by pig milk are halal.
- Since horses are animals suitable for wars, eating their flesh is makrooh (allow but not suggested) according to Imam A’zam. However, they can be eaten according to Imam Shafi’i and Ahmad bin Hanbal.
source: http://www.questionsonislam.com/question/can-you-list-animals-whose-meats-are-helal-eat
http://halalcertification.ie/halal/islamic-method-of-slaughtering/
http://www.quran-islam.org/articles/halal_meat_(P1156).html
http://www.thesweetbeet.com/vegan-diet/