Let our children learn the art of sacrificing
Sunday, 20 December 2009
Maswood Alam Khan
Not everybody has a heart to kill a rooster or a cow. One needs to practice slaughtering small creatures before embarking upon the assignment of chasing and killing a big beast. Such a man, skilled in killing, may become not only an ace hunter or a dexterous butcher he, if he is badly brought up, can kill also a man or a woman or even a child in cold blood.
The first lesson, as the saying goes in our society, given to a young man apprenticed to a dacoit is chopping arum plants into pieces at will before he is allowed to join a mission of committing a real-time robbery. In a similar vein, a soldier is required to practice pushing a bayonet into sandbags with a view to steeling his heart and hands so that in a real-time battlefield he can shoot an enemy soldier without any vacillation and then confirm his enemy's death by piercing a bayonet into his chest without any qualm or remorse.
Ironically, a man's soft and delicate heart, which once used to be easily touched by others' griefs, congeals into a stone heart devoid of love or mercy! Humans thus trained as apprentice killers are ultimately graduated into professional killers.
Every year during Eid-ul-Azha when I find people, especially children, indulged in merriment while slaughtering sacrificial animals on the Eid day, many like me must be wondering whether our festivity is giving us a lesson on sacrificing or a training course on killing! The way we celebrate the Eid should describe the festivity as a day of feasting rather than a day of sacrificing.
To realise the essence of sacrifice Eid-ul-Azha is meant for we should know how our Prophet Ibrahim did sacrifice. Our prophet Ibrahim had a dream in which he saw himself slaughtering his son. Hazrat Ibrahim believed the dream and had thought that the dream was from Allah. However our prophet made up his mind to devote Ismail, his only son --his dearest possession. The moment Hazrat Ibrahim was about to slit the throat of his son, Allah revealed to him that his sacrifice had already been fulfilled and our prophet was ordered by Allah to slay a ram instead.
The primary significance of the story for Muslims is that Hazrat Ibrahim had placed his will in complete submission to God, even to the point of being willing to kill his son. "Islam" means "submission," and submission to God's will is the ultimate Muslim virtue. Flesh or blood of sacrificed animals does not reach God. It is our piety that reaches Him.
Do we really feel the same feelings while slaughtering animals? Is it not the animal alone that is sacrificing its life and the buyer of the animal watering his mouth in the expectation of relishing meats of the slaughtered animal? Do we feel the same sense of sacrifice on the day of Eid the way people in deserts used to sense while slaughtering cattle heads which were perhaps their only dear possessions in those days?
What is however needed is a shift in our lookout. In the present context, some changes may be brought in the mode of sacrificing for realistic benefits to the poor. Would it not be better, to say for an example, for every rich family to buy only one big bull and two or more young calves on the occasion of Eid-ul-Azha -- the bull for slaughtering and the calves for donating to poor people who can make some money through a self-employment business of rearing the calves and later selling them for a profit?
Mere slaughtering of animals in our present-day society does not really equate the true sense of sacrifice. Neither it is socially decent or psychologically healthful to slaughter an animal in public places causing traumas in children's mind and blockades in our sanitation systems by wastes of slaughtered animals.
The other day I was appalled hearing from a fanatic disciple of a Pir Sahib that "a man's sin can be absolved by the blood of an animal and that is the main logic behind slaughtering animals on Eid-ul-Azha". If that be the logic I think meat from such a slaughtered animal is not 'Halal' because such an unscientific and prejudiced belief may please angry Gods of other religions, but not Allah, the merciful -- our God in Islam.
In Islam, sacrifice is not intended -- as it is in other religions -- to mollify the deity; it is merely a visible token of the worshiper's submission to God. Reflecting this, the meat of the sacrificed animal is divided into thirds. One third is kept by the sponsor of the sacrifice; one third is given to relatives and friends; and one third is donated to the poor. Sacrifice in Islam, I believe, is essentially symbolic -- an external symbol of an internal dedication and voluntary submission to the Will of the Almighty.
The most abominable culture I find during Eid-ul-Azha is allowing our children to watch how an animal, with its forelegs and back-legs tightly tied with ropes, is grounded to lie on its back, while a ritual slaughterer (the Imam of the local mosque) runs a knife across its throat -- the animal bellowing horribly, its tied-up legs flailing wildly, its blood gushing out and spraying over the slaughterer's garbs.
A child who would be watching this gory scene for the first time in his life after learning that such an act of killing a living being is normal may have a seed of butchery planted in his mind. The same child, as he would be growing, will one day be persuaded to run the knife himself across an animal's throat. The same child, at the behest of his guardians, will be encouraged to flaunt his garments soaked with blood of the slaughtered animal as a mark of chivalry.
Should a child with his embryonic mind be allowed to derive pleasures from such acts of killing? May such an act of killing an animal induce him in future to draw a knife across the neck of a human being?
Cruelty to animal is a crime and is forbidden in Islam. With a view to reducing an animal's pain Islam prescribes that it be killed by a single stroke of a sharp knife across his throat. But, a conscious animal whose throat is slit experiences terrible fear and suffering before it dies. In many countries, an animal is first stunned and then slaughtered in order to reduce the animal's fear. Our Islamic scholars may please find out whether we may similarly stun and slaughter an animal during Eid-ul-Azha.
In most of the civilised Muslim countries sacrificial animals are slaughtered either inside a mosque or at a designated slaughterhouse. There are organisations, which perform the job of slaughtering animals and processing the meats and make home delivery of the due shares of meat to the Muslims who pay the required amount of money for the whole job.
But nowhere in a civilised society, except in Bangladesh, I read or heard that children should be allowed to view such slaughtering. During my stay in Kuala Lumpur for about three and a half years on an official assignment I had never seen sacrificial animals being slaughtered in public places where children could view the act.
Infants and children during their development stages learn through hands-on experiences. Timely and sensitive interventions by adults when a child is on the edge of learning a wrong lesson or performing a risky task can help the child avoid the dangers in future.
A child may love to knot a string with the tail of a grasshopper to see how the insect flies with an extra burden. At that moment, if the guardian doesn't teach the child that such an act is a cruelty the child may take the brutality as a fun and may not feel queasy in future while inflicting or viewing tortures being meted out against any living being.
Allowing our children to view and relish the slaughtering acts during Eid-ul-Azha, I am afraid, may infuse into their psyche a kernel of belief that committing suicide or homicide and torturing or killing an animal is as normal as playing a game -- a dangerous learning that may ultimately turn him into a sadist.
A child thus developed into a sadistic character may in future find 'throwing a cat into boiling water' or 'spraying acid onto the face of a girl' a mere entertaining fun.
A Muslim who in his childhood played with killing insects and animals and dabbed his body and clothes with blood of a slaughtered animal may deem bloodletting not very scary or sinful. He may find it easy even to kill himself because he is already addicted to killing.
Killing is intoxicating. There is a pleasure, inherent in human genes, killers derive from killing the way we even the fainthearted ones derive a pleasure in swatting a mosquito dead with a rolled-up newspaper.
The act of killing arouses in some diehard killers a lurid satisfaction, a spasm of delight and sometimes a psychological release.
At least for the sake of our children we appeal to the Islamic scholars to introduce in our country a system, as followed by civilised societies in many Muslim countries, which may prohibit us from viewing the gruesome scenes of slaughtering. Scientific slaughtering in designated places may also solve a myriad of problems related to waste management.
May our children grow with an innocuous mind and shy away from anything as gory as butchering a bull! During the great festivity of Eid-ul-Azha our children should rather be encouraged to present their dearest possessions as gifts to their friends who are less fortunate. Let our children learn the art of sacrificing -- not the act of slaughtering.
Maswood Alam Khan is
a writer at
large.maswood@hotmail.com
Not everybody has a heart to kill a rooster or a cow. One needs to practice slaughtering small creatures before embarking upon the assignment of chasing and killing a big beast. Such a man, skilled in killing, may become not only an ace hunter or a dexterous butcher he, if he is badly brought up, can kill also a man or a woman or even a child in cold blood.
The first lesson, as the saying goes in our society, given to a young man apprenticed to a dacoit is chopping arum plants into pieces at will before he is allowed to join a mission of committing a real-time robbery. In a similar vein, a soldier is required to practice pushing a bayonet into sandbags with a view to steeling his heart and hands so that in a real-time battlefield he can shoot an enemy soldier without any vacillation and then confirm his enemy's death by piercing a bayonet into his chest without any qualm or remorse.
Ironically, a man's soft and delicate heart, which once used to be easily touched by others' griefs, congeals into a stone heart devoid of love or mercy! Humans thus trained as apprentice killers are ultimately graduated into professional killers.
Every year during Eid-ul-Azha when I find people, especially children, indulged in merriment while slaughtering sacrificial animals on the Eid day, many like me must be wondering whether our festivity is giving us a lesson on sacrificing or a training course on killing! The way we celebrate the Eid should describe the festivity as a day of feasting rather than a day of sacrificing.
To realise the essence of sacrifice Eid-ul-Azha is meant for we should know how our Prophet Ibrahim did sacrifice. Our prophet Ibrahim had a dream in which he saw himself slaughtering his son. Hazrat Ibrahim believed the dream and had thought that the dream was from Allah. However our prophet made up his mind to devote Ismail, his only son --his dearest possession. The moment Hazrat Ibrahim was about to slit the throat of his son, Allah revealed to him that his sacrifice had already been fulfilled and our prophet was ordered by Allah to slay a ram instead.
The primary significance of the story for Muslims is that Hazrat Ibrahim had placed his will in complete submission to God, even to the point of being willing to kill his son. "Islam" means "submission," and submission to God's will is the ultimate Muslim virtue. Flesh or blood of sacrificed animals does not reach God. It is our piety that reaches Him.
Do we really feel the same feelings while slaughtering animals? Is it not the animal alone that is sacrificing its life and the buyer of the animal watering his mouth in the expectation of relishing meats of the slaughtered animal? Do we feel the same sense of sacrifice on the day of Eid the way people in deserts used to sense while slaughtering cattle heads which were perhaps their only dear possessions in those days?
What is however needed is a shift in our lookout. In the present context, some changes may be brought in the mode of sacrificing for realistic benefits to the poor. Would it not be better, to say for an example, for every rich family to buy only one big bull and two or more young calves on the occasion of Eid-ul-Azha -- the bull for slaughtering and the calves for donating to poor people who can make some money through a self-employment business of rearing the calves and later selling them for a profit?
Mere slaughtering of animals in our present-day society does not really equate the true sense of sacrifice. Neither it is socially decent or psychologically healthful to slaughter an animal in public places causing traumas in children's mind and blockades in our sanitation systems by wastes of slaughtered animals.
The other day I was appalled hearing from a fanatic disciple of a Pir Sahib that "a man's sin can be absolved by the blood of an animal and that is the main logic behind slaughtering animals on Eid-ul-Azha". If that be the logic I think meat from such a slaughtered animal is not 'Halal' because such an unscientific and prejudiced belief may please angry Gods of other religions, but not Allah, the merciful -- our God in Islam.
In Islam, sacrifice is not intended -- as it is in other religions -- to mollify the deity; it is merely a visible token of the worshiper's submission to God. Reflecting this, the meat of the sacrificed animal is divided into thirds. One third is kept by the sponsor of the sacrifice; one third is given to relatives and friends; and one third is donated to the poor. Sacrifice in Islam, I believe, is essentially symbolic -- an external symbol of an internal dedication and voluntary submission to the Will of the Almighty.
The most abominable culture I find during Eid-ul-Azha is allowing our children to watch how an animal, with its forelegs and back-legs tightly tied with ropes, is grounded to lie on its back, while a ritual slaughterer (the Imam of the local mosque) runs a knife across its throat -- the animal bellowing horribly, its tied-up legs flailing wildly, its blood gushing out and spraying over the slaughterer's garbs.
A child who would be watching this gory scene for the first time in his life after learning that such an act of killing a living being is normal may have a seed of butchery planted in his mind. The same child, as he would be growing, will one day be persuaded to run the knife himself across an animal's throat. The same child, at the behest of his guardians, will be encouraged to flaunt his garments soaked with blood of the slaughtered animal as a mark of chivalry.
Should a child with his embryonic mind be allowed to derive pleasures from such acts of killing? May such an act of killing an animal induce him in future to draw a knife across the neck of a human being?
Cruelty to animal is a crime and is forbidden in Islam. With a view to reducing an animal's pain Islam prescribes that it be killed by a single stroke of a sharp knife across his throat. But, a conscious animal whose throat is slit experiences terrible fear and suffering before it dies. In many countries, an animal is first stunned and then slaughtered in order to reduce the animal's fear. Our Islamic scholars may please find out whether we may similarly stun and slaughter an animal during Eid-ul-Azha.
In most of the civilised Muslim countries sacrificial animals are slaughtered either inside a mosque or at a designated slaughterhouse. There are organisations, which perform the job of slaughtering animals and processing the meats and make home delivery of the due shares of meat to the Muslims who pay the required amount of money for the whole job.
But nowhere in a civilised society, except in Bangladesh, I read or heard that children should be allowed to view such slaughtering. During my stay in Kuala Lumpur for about three and a half years on an official assignment I had never seen sacrificial animals being slaughtered in public places where children could view the act.
Infants and children during their development stages learn through hands-on experiences. Timely and sensitive interventions by adults when a child is on the edge of learning a wrong lesson or performing a risky task can help the child avoid the dangers in future.
A child may love to knot a string with the tail of a grasshopper to see how the insect flies with an extra burden. At that moment, if the guardian doesn't teach the child that such an act is a cruelty the child may take the brutality as a fun and may not feel queasy in future while inflicting or viewing tortures being meted out against any living being.
Allowing our children to view and relish the slaughtering acts during Eid-ul-Azha, I am afraid, may infuse into their psyche a kernel of belief that committing suicide or homicide and torturing or killing an animal is as normal as playing a game -- a dangerous learning that may ultimately turn him into a sadist.
A child thus developed into a sadistic character may in future find 'throwing a cat into boiling water' or 'spraying acid onto the face of a girl' a mere entertaining fun.
A Muslim who in his childhood played with killing insects and animals and dabbed his body and clothes with blood of a slaughtered animal may deem bloodletting not very scary or sinful. He may find it easy even to kill himself because he is already addicted to killing.
Killing is intoxicating. There is a pleasure, inherent in human genes, killers derive from killing the way we even the fainthearted ones derive a pleasure in swatting a mosquito dead with a rolled-up newspaper.
The act of killing arouses in some diehard killers a lurid satisfaction, a spasm of delight and sometimes a psychological release.
At least for the sake of our children we appeal to the Islamic scholars to introduce in our country a system, as followed by civilised societies in many Muslim countries, which may prohibit us from viewing the gruesome scenes of slaughtering. Scientific slaughtering in designated places may also solve a myriad of problems related to waste management.
May our children grow with an innocuous mind and shy away from anything as gory as butchering a bull! During the great festivity of Eid-ul-Azha our children should rather be encouraged to present their dearest possessions as gifts to their friends who are less fortunate. Let our children learn the art of sacrificing -- not the act of slaughtering.
Maswood Alam Khan is
a writer at
large.maswood@hotmail.com