Blindspot!
From Issue: 709 [Read full issue]
False Respect
Strict respect for the form of the Islamic message yet obvious infidelity to its substance is seen during the festival of sacrifice (Eid al-Adha) which commemorates Abraham's sacrifice at the end of pilgrimage. Not only can one witness appalling scenes in terms of lack of respect for animals and their ill-treatment, but one is also shocked at the amount of waste, at both national and international levels. Indeed, progress has been made regarding the distribution of meat, in particular to people in poorer countries, but chaos still rules. Mistreating animals, wasting food - is this being faithful to the higher goals of Islam's message? Where are the fuqaha councils - integrating specialists in slaughtering techniques but also those with up-to-date knowledge of development, who can stress the goals and priorities firmly and vigorously while suggesting new approaches to those issues? Because respecting the lives of living animals is more important than the "techniques" used to slaughter them, because wasting food is unacceptable, because higher goals cannot be ignored in the name of means and productivity! For all those reasons, it is important to produce more coherent reflection and practices, and to issue circumstantial legal rulings, taking applied ethics into account in the light of the challenges of our times.
Proposing breeding techniques on a small, medium, or large scale; developing new types of slaughterhouses allying respect and efficiency; issuing legal rulings (fatawa) that, in some areas, more clearly encourage monetary compensation rather than ritual sacrifice (which remains a recommended act - sunnah) are all initiatives that may help the Muslim world to reconcile itself with the higher objectives and meaning of its ethics rather than hiding behind insistence on norms and means that guarantee only false respect of the requirements of Islam's message. Ritual slaughter is a simple, day-to-day example, which perfectly reveals the contradiction within contemporary spiritual teachings. It emblemizes the whole problem: obsession with form regardless of substance, confusing means and ends, adoption of reform that is not suitable for transformation, and overdetermining norms while neglecting meaning: it is the heart of all contradictions.
Compiled From:
"Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation" - Tariq Ramadan, pp. 237, 238