IN a country where justice for humans is hard to come by, animal rights are seen as a somewhat Western concept. “Leave it to the Americans to love their pets more than they love each other,” some say. “We can’t focus on animals when we need to worry about humans first,” say others.
Worldwide, people rail against the cruel and unhygienic mass slaughter wrong of animals as depicted in the documentaries Food Inc and Earthlings.
The Holy Quran gives us specific instructions on how to slaughter animals in a way that spares them pain and provides us with meat free of blood and pathogens.
Islam teaches us to care for animals so much that we have been told not to keep birds in cages. If God created these creatures with intellect and emotions and gave us specific instructions regarding their treatment, who is anyone to say they don’t matter?
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Last year, on World Animal Day on Oct 5, the then prime minister spoke of our religious duty to care for the well-being of animals, but did not touch on the subject of animal rights violations in Pakistan, let alone offer any solutions. How will there ever be an improvement when our leaders don’t even admit there is a problem?
One cannot be a good human being without a moral compass, which demands humane treatment of animals. No one is being asked to adopt a pet or to keep a dog inside their home.
All I ask is that we petition for these atrocities to cease, or at the very least, admit we are wrong in allowing them to occur. The biggest problem we have as a nation regarding animal rights is that many of us don’t even consider violations to be an