Posted on 04/13/2011 7:19:38 PM PDT by TheConservativeCitizen
It’s amazing some of the things you can learn from Twitter. This headline showed up, I clicked the link, and I learned that kosher and halal aren’t just about a religious figure blessing the food. It’s about taking a sharp knife and slashing open an animal’s veins and then watching it die while spurting blood everywhere. NOTE: the following is what passes for “fair and balanced” reporting in Europe:
"AMSTERDAM – One of Europe’s first countries to allow Jews to practice their religion openly may soon pass a law banning centuries-old Jewish and Muslim traditions on the ritual slaughter of animals.
In the Netherlands, an unlikely alliance of an animal rights party and the xenophobic Freedom Party is spearheading support for the ban on kosher and halal slaughter methods that critics say inflict unacceptable suffering on animals.
The far right’s embrace of the bill, which is expected to go to a parliamentary vote this month, is based mostly on its strident hostility toward the Dutch Muslim population. The Party for the Animals, the world’s first such party to be elected to parliament, says humane treatment of animals trumps traditions of tolerance."
The Dutch have some real problems with some of the things the Muslims are doing in their country, like having a film director shot to death with a note attached to him by a knife stabbed into his chest. Apparently it’s a problem for ladies to walk down the street with their hair uncovered, because they’re assaulted by roving bands of Muslim youngsters. The country prides itself on being tolerant, but apparently dictating to your citizens that they have to tolerate everything can cause a backlash. Anyway, along with the knife-slashing, I didn’t know about this, either:
"If the Netherlands does outlaw procedures that make meat kosher for Jews or halal for Muslims, it will be the first country outside New Zealand to do so in recent years. It will join the Scandinavian, Baltic countries and Switzerland, whose bans are mostly traceable to pre-World War II anti-Semitism."
I’m not a PETA member, but I do have a soft spot in my heart for animals and an enormous hatred for people who mistreat them, so I agree with this legislation. I don’t care what your religion is; you can’t torture animals to death and then hide behind freedom of religion. Try a compromise: stick your religious guy in the slaughterhouse and have him make a couple of symbolic ritual incisions on the cow’s neck with a magic marker. If you don’t like the new law, then consider becoming a vegetarian.
I’ve heard stories of people going to visit their co-workers and friends from Somalia who live in my city.
On more than one occasion they’ve told of stories where they went to use the bathroom and saw a recently slaughtered lamb in the bathtub.
Yet even with this it would seem decapitation would be allowed, as it cuts the jugulars and carotids in one smooth motion.
A well delivered arrow works the best...
If they do it for food, is ot okay then?
I once lived in a Hispanic neighborhood and I noticed that around Easter my neighbors had a small lamb tied up in their garage that disappeared shortly thereafter. Presumably they were Christian, most likely Catholic.
I grew up in northern New Mexico where it was a normal thing to slaughter a pig or cow every so often. And they ate every bit of that sucker. Eye balls, testicles, tounge, blood pudding, deep fried fat that they called chicharones. It was funny to them to see the little white kid from the city (me) watching all this with his mouth open.
Man I’m glad I finally got out of there!
Hispanic=Catholic almost always.
It’s open bigotry to support this legislation.
A former President of the House of Representatives in the Netherlands from this last decade is from a long line of Kosher butchers.
And why should he after spending a career serving the Dutch people be unable to buy a Kosher cut of meat for his dinner?
This was one of the very first laws the Nazis passed when they gained power in Germany.
IN 1958 the United States FDA outlawed live slaughter at local butcher shops.
This had little effect on the ability of religious communities to continue to slaughter and market/purchase meat. It did affect local butchers who soon were squeezed out by larger slaughterhouses.
The Dutch could take upon them the same legislation, allowing ritual slaghuter under reeligious authority at commercial slaughterhouses. That fact that they have explicitly also proposed to ban this also shows it is based in bigotry and any and all window dressing about animal cruelty or whastever is just that window dressing for religious bigotry.
This was actually the Nazis first step towards the Holocaust: ban Judaism by banning ritual slaughter.
Views of liberals, Nazis and conservatives
belief: Liberal Nazi Conservative
Vegetarianism: YES YES NO
Gun-grabbers: YES YES NO
Anti-semitic YES YES NO
Socialist: YES YES NO
Environmental Religionist: YES YES NO
Pagan/anti-Christian: YES YES NO
Regulatory Regime supported by entrenched industries: YES YES NO
Islamo-fascist frinedly: YES YES NO
Eugenecists: YES YES NO
“Right to die”: YES YES NO
Racial preferences: YES YES NO
Leave the Romans out of this. Many of the enthusiastic supporters of the European Union were Catholics, but the Catholic Church has pulled further and further away from support as the EU has made more and more clear that they will not recognize Christian heritage as part of its foundation.
School-based sex education: YES YES NO
Parental rights: NO NO YES
Gov’t-enforced dietary restriction: YES YES NO
>> Hispanic-Catholic almost always. <<
Sorta yes, sorta no.
The Catholics didn’t kill of the indigenous population, instead hoping to convert them. ( recently learned that even Sitting Bull was Catholic!) Given the inability to send adequate priests and catechists in among the indigenous population, there’s been some level of backsliding and syncretism. As of late, the Catholic hierarchy has done an excellent jon of opposing this, and many of the syncretic groups have declared themselves Protestant in nations like Brazil. But ritualistic animal slaughter may be a carry-over from indigenous customs. That said, Greeks and Eastern Catholic churches often have a paschal lamb, so it may be something Catholic, but I’m just not aware of that having been spread by Spaniards or Portuguese to the new world; most of what I know about ritualistic slaughter is more Santeria, an African religion which uses Catholic images to disguise itself.
I don’t know about Muslim customs, but the traditional Jewish methods of slaughtering animals are not cruel, IMHO.
The problem is that most people are accustomed to buying their meat at the supermarket, all nicely wrapped up in plastic. So the idea of slaughtering animals in any way at all appalls them.
Sorry, but the kosher killing of animals is a good deal kinder than what typically happens in the wild, when one animal kills another, or when an animal dies of old age, starvation, or accidental injury.
These proposed laws are basically antisemitic, I believe.
I disagree. I think the proposed laws are anti-religion. I think they are the first step to stamping out religion in general. They are capitalizing on the current anti-muslim wave to make laws against religion in general. There will be more to come.
I’d love to leave the Romans out of this. Otto von Habsburg had other ideas though, with his colorful description of the EU. Besides, whatever goes on with the EU is purely Germany’s decision.
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