Report from the Mosque: Animals in Islam

Last night, we attended an open house at a Mosque here. The purpose was for people to come and learn about al-Islam.

Toward the end of the Q-and-A period, I asked the Imam (pic, above) the following question, which went like this:

"Asalaam aleikum. (He and most attendees responded, 'Waleikum asalaam'.) Hindu people hold the cow as sacred, as Divine Mother, almost like how Christians might view Mary. I grew up here, and most people I know keep pets in their homes - cats or dogs and such - and cherish them, consider them part of their family. My wife and I have a dog who is our 'child' in a very meaningful sense. I am wondering if in the Hadith or Qur'an there is any mention of our proper relationship with animals, and if you would speak to that?"

The Imam gave a pretty sweet answer. Between my poor hearing and his accent, I did not catch every word, but I got most of it. The Imam began his answer by saying it was a very good question and that he appreciated it. He explained that though Muslims are not vegetarian, they do keep Halal and Kosher rules, partly to ensure compassion for animals. He explained that Mohammed stopped the practice of using animals for "target practice" and that he told people who ride camels to get down off of the camels when they stop to meet, in order to let the camels rest; also, that no animal - bird, fish, etc. - should be killed or harmed in any way, aside from for eating them.

Afterwards, in the fellowship period, several people approached me to follow up. One was a US soldier who had served in Iraq since after the Gulf War who said he is going vegetarian now because he has come to see that "it is not right to kill and eat animals when we don't need to." Two separate Muslims came to me (one Egyptian, the other white American) with the following two stories from the Hadith:

There was a very bad criminal who one day found a cat out in the rain and took it into his home to dry and warm it, feed it, care for it, and that ALL of his previous sins were wiped clean by this one act. In the other version, it was a prostitute who saw a thirsty dog trying to get water, so she gave it water and all her sins were wiped clean.

Nice!

May all beings be well and happy, free of suffering and the causes of suffering.

World Animal Protection

We are World Animal Protection

We end the needless suffering of animals
We influence decision makers to put animals on the global agenda
We inspire people to change animals' lives for the better
We move the world to protect animals

Visit their site.

May all beings be happy and free!

If A Tree Falls

This 1988 song by Bruce Cockburn so beautifully, powerfully speaks.... And yet, so many years later, the "cortege rhythm" continues unabated....

The forests fall. Please listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErS9HCh8GfE

Rain forest
Mist and mystery
Teeming green
Green brain facing lobotomy
Climate control centre for the world
Ancient cord of coexistence
Hacked by parasitic greedhead scam -
From Sarawak to Amazonas
Costa Rica to mangy B.C. hills -
Cortege rhythm of falling timber.

What kind of currency grows in these new deserts,
These brand new flood plains?

If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear?
If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear?
Anybody hear the forest fall?

Cut and move on
Cut and move on
Take out trees
Take out wildlife at a rate of species every single day
Take out people who've lived with this for 100,000 years -
Inject a billion burgers worth of beef -
Grain eaters - methane dispensers.

Through thinning ozone,
Waves fall on wrinkled earth -
Gravity, light, ancient refuse of stars,
Speak of a drowning -
But this, this is something other.
Busy monster eats dark holes in the spirit world
Where wild things have to go
To disappear
Forever

If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear?
If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear?
Anybody hear the forest fall?

May all beings be well and happy.

Goldfish Compassion

I can never forget the sad, but surprising and beautiful story about my goldfish.

I had rescued some "feeder fish," and they lived happily in my pond where they grew quite large. There were five, and one developed a classic case of "fin rot." In order to treat it, I set up a relatively shallow temporary hospital tank near the pond and put this fish in. I turned away to attend to something, and this was a mistake. The fish, unbeknownst to me, leapt out of the tub onto the dry patio. I returned a few minutes later and discovered, to my horror, the fish barely flopping and a bit parched. I quickly dispatched it back into the pond with the other fish, then watched hopefully to see if it would survive.

Very much to my surprise, I observed the other four fish swimming near the injured one. Working together, they proceeded to support their companion from underneath as they pushed him around near the surface of the water! They worked as a team, some supporting the fish from underneath, others flanking him, and taking shifts as they moved the injured fish forward so that water would move through its gills. Weakly, it struggled to survive, barely able to move its fins and gulp water as the diligent companions continued to offer their emergency services. I watched, amazed, for nearly a half an hour as this scene continued.

As with most fish, and certainly these, feeding time is a time of frenzied focus as they rush to eat their fill. I wondered if these, both the injured one and its helpers, needed to eat, and whether, if I fed them at this point, the helpers would abandon their friend for the food. As they had not been fed that day, I needed to feed them, anyway. I put the usual amount of flakes onto the surface of the water. But, surprisingly and very much out of character, not a single fish endeavored to eat a single morsel of the sinking food flakes. They, instead, continued to buoy the injured fish about near the water’s surface for many ensuing hours without so much as taking a bite!

Sadly, their efforts would fail. I later found the injured fish at the bottom of the pond. As I buried him pond-side, I reveled in the amazing lesson I had learned about the capacity for fish to exhibit compassion and self-sacrifice. What else could explain this behavior?


May all beings be well and happy, free of suffering and the causes of suffering.

Our Ideas About Animal Intelligence

Frans de Waal has a new book, Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are? Right on point, as that is the better question than "are animals intelligent?" or "how intelligent are animals?" and such.

The following excerpts (with my editorial comments) are from an interview with the author, which I recommend reading, if not his books as well.

“What if instead, this whole business is more like a bush, with cognition taking different forms that are often incomparable to ours?”

I have been aware of this problem for years, and our anthropocentric ideas that animal “intelligence” is to be measured against or compared with ours. That is way off track. (I wrote about this years ago and will post more of that to this blog in the coming months.)

“We need to become more focused on those animals than ourselves, and not necessarily make every comparison with ourselves the most informative.”

Exactly.

“...each species is different and each species depends on what they do and what they need to know. It's very hard to say which one is smarter, and that sort of comparison is not even relevant.”

Precisely, yes.

“This movement I feel puts humans in a different perspective and uses animals as a sort of mirror in some sense. I think it has a profound effect on how we look at ourselves and our place in nature.”

YES!

May all beings be well and happy, free of suffering and the causes of suffering.

Ghosts of Animals

In a new photo book, Inherit the Dust, Nick Brandt places life-size portraits of animals in the now-industrialized landscapes where they once lived and thrived.

Watch this very powerful 2 minute video:

http://www.bbc.com/news/video_and_audio/features/magazine-36234393/36234393

May all being be well.

Good Food

Learn about how our food choices affect our world and the beings who live in it, and explore alternative solutions: http://www.gfi.org/why

May all beings be happy and well!

The Pope Video

Please view - and if moved to, share - this brief, simple, and profound video message from Pope Francis.

http://thepopevideo.org/en/video/care-creation.html

May all beings be well.