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Articles
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> Questions and Answers (3) by Naseer Ahmad
Faruqui Sahib [Question by some Hindus: Why has
Islam allowed the eating of animal
flesh?]
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Questions
and Answers (3) by Naseer Ahmad Faruqui
Sahib:
[Question
by some Hindus: Why has Islam allowed the eating of animal
flesh?]:
by Naseer Ahmad
Faruqui
The Light,
September 24, 1980 (Question and
Answer)
Some Hindu gentlemen from South India
have asked a question which is answered below:
Question:
Why has Islam allowed the
eating of animal flesh?
Answer:
Islam is not the only
religion to have allowed the eating of animal flesh. Most
religions allow it. Even the others allowed it originally
but their followers don’t eat it now for sentimental
reasons which will be discussed later in this article. For
instance, the ancient Hindu sacred literature
mentions approvingly of the sacrifice of animals whose flesh
was eaten presumably by those incharge of the temples where
the sacrifice was given. Even now animals are slaughtered
before certain idols of goddesses who are supposed to drink
the blood of the slaughtered animals. What happens to the
flesh of those animals left behind in the temples is
anybody’s guess. The sacrifice is supposed to be an
offering to the gods and goddesses to please them. If gods
and goddesses are pleased at the slaughter of animals whose
blood, if also not their flesh, is acceptable to them as
food, why should human beings hesitate to eat animal flesh?
The Hindu gentlemen from Southern India (Madras) who have
asked this question may not be aware but most of the Hindus
in Central, Western and Northern India now eat animal flesh.
Except for Jains and Buddhists, almost all other nations and
religions approve of the eating of animal flesh.
Human
Nature:
The reason for the
overwhelming practice of eating flesh is that it is in the
human nature to eat it. Proof of it is to be found in the
canine teeth to be found in the human mouth, which
teeth are only to be found in the carnivorous animals, and
in the juices which flow in the human stomach
[i.e.,
pepsin], the intestines and
other organs of the digestive system. It is true that there
are also in the human mouth the teeth to be found among the
vegetarian animals. But that goes to show the fact God, the
Great and Wise Creator, intended man to eat both the animal
flesh and the vegetables.
Medical
Reasons:
Proteins are the most
important need of the human body. And animal proteins are
the best and most easily assimilable proteins. The system
within the human body for the assimilation of the proteins
is very complicated and elaborate. Ask any impartial doctor
and he will tell you that proteins from animal flesh are the
most easily digested and assimilated proteins of all.
Besides, there are important vitamins, minerals and enzymes
to be found in animal flesh, which in fact help in the
assimilation of proteins drawn from the same
flesh.
Effect on
Character:
That food affects human
character is now beginning to be realised by those doing
medical research in the West -- particularly in America.
Meat gives courage and stamina to human beings, as
shown by history also that meat eating nations are the
bravest. Even in this sub-continent the Rajputs, Gurkhas,
and Marathas, who have been the best soldiers among the
Hindus, are meat-eaters.
Economic
Reasons:
Animals out-number human
beings. And if they are not eaten at the proper time
they become, when old and unfit for active work, a drag and
a drain on human economy. Apart from the high cost of
maintaining them when they give neither milk nor service,
they require for grazing areas badly needed by human beings
to grow their own food. I was once in charge of a district
in the Bombay Presidency, which was overwhelmingly Hindu. It
was stricken with famine, after the failure of the monsoon,
and human beings and animals both suffered quite
unnecessarily. There was no grass for the animals and no
food for the human beings. Both suffered the agonies of
starvation. Government rushed some food for the human
beings, but they could not at the same time find transport
or fodder for the animals which suffered agonies of thirst
(for there was insufficient water, too, because of the
drought) and hunger before dying a slow and cruel death. The
human beings also suffered more or less permanent damage to
their health. Now had they eaten the animals they could not
maintain, they would have saved the latter months of
suffering and agony before they died in any case, and also
saved themselves permanent damage to health and efficiency,
unnecessary suffering and even death.
Even in normal times if the animals
were not eaten they would soon outnumber human beings, and
be a nuisance, if not a menace, to them. In any case, there
are certain areas of the world where there are no
vegetables, in fact no vegetation, such as the vast deserts
in all continents, and the icebound north and south poles.
If no meat were allowed to be eaten there, nearly one-third
of the human race would become extinct.
Objections
Answered:
The main objection to meat
eating is that it means cruelty to animals when they are
slaughtered. That objection may have looked worth
considering before the scientific discoveries of the
20th century. It was no less a person than
an outstanding Hindu scientist and a Nobel Prize winner, Sir
J. C. Bose, who discovered that vegetables have, not only
life, but sensibility particularly of pain. That finishes
for all time the objection of cruelty to animals. If we
slaughter a sheep or a bigger animal, it may suffer
momentary pain when its throat is cut for it becomes
insensitive to pain the moment its jugular vein is cut, and
is unconscious of pain for the rest of its dying process.
Such momentary pain is, in any case, better than months or
years of slow dying through old age, debility and disease.
But one such animal feeds several human beings for several
meals, depending on its size. On the other hand, if one
is a vegetarian, one slaughters, causing acute pain, to
a large number of live vegetables to feed even one person at
a time. Should we also ban the grazing of cattle because
every blade of grass plucked by their teeth is a life eaten
with acute pain to the poor grass.
Talking about cruelty--is it
cruelty to kill an animal instantaneously, but no cruelty
to tie up a cow for life with a rope, deny its calf the
milk the cow produces for it, and cause acute mental torture
to the mother-cow and the hungry calf, while a so-called
humanitarian being steals the milk before their eyes? Or is
it humanitarian to enslave the bullocks in the plough or the
bullock carts and work them day in and day out?
No, sir, to put the animal kingdom to
the uses for which it was created is no cruelty. On this
point may I quote the Holy Quran to end this
discussion?
"See they not that We have
created cattle for them, out of what Our hands have
wrought, so they are their masters?
And We have subjected the cattle to
them, so some of them they ride, and some they
eat.
And therein they have advantages
and drinks. Will they not then give thanks?"
(36:71-73).
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> Questions and Answers (3) by Naseer Ahmad
Faruqui Sahib [Question by some Hindus: Why has
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