Apostate prophet for PETA; the value of animal sacrifice

In answer to the video "The Sacrifice Craziness"

Until now and throughout the Muslim world, the courage and trust of Ibrahim in his Lord, his complete detachement from all wordly benefits, including the most precious gifts for God's sake, are remembered through the day of sacrifice ('id al adha).

Throughout the Quran, the notion of sacrificing a portion of anything of value is encouraged as a means of spiritual betterment by expressing gratitude to God and solidarity with mankind. Anything that provides benefits, directly or indirectly, is eligible for sacrifice.

From all the worldly things an individual is told to sacrifice from, whether abstract or material, the slaughter of livestock, being another of those benefits, is only mentioned once. The aqiqah, the practice of sacrificing an animal for a newborn (most reliable versions speak of 1 animal whether it is a boy or a girl) is not seen as an obligatory deed. It may have been a situation where the prophet saw it appropriate for his own case, or may have recommended it for a specific case.

Animal sacrifice nowadays has lost most of its meaning because of our eating habits that radically changed our perception of the real value of animals, whether on a concrete or abstract level. The over consumption of meat has lead to unsustainable farming, wasting land, food and water resources that could be more efficiently used to feed humans. Lands are farmed to grow grains and animal protein that will feed other animals that normally eat grass, in order to increase their productivity. Animals that should be eating vegetation can only handle so much animal protein and grain in their diet. When they get too much they start to get sick. High grain diets change the pH of the cow’s rumen making the cow sick and allowing E.coli to grow; potentially exposing anyone who consumes products from that animal to the bacteria.  Strains of E.coli that regularly put people in the hospital develop in the rumen of cows that eat excessive amounts of grain. Just a short time back on hay or pasture, allows the rumen to regulate its pH and eliminate the E.coli.

That system, which disregards the animals' natural behavior, long time health inevitably leads to mistreatment as a consequence of frenetic industrial farming and improper slaughtering, besides environmental destruction. That system has become so banal and low-cost that to the vast majority of humanity who is now completely desensitized at the notion of killing an animal to eat it, the literal meaning of sacrifice lost all significance whether on a psychological or economical level. When billions of animals are killed each day to feed us, in addition bred in miserable, abasing conditions and that meat products are available in abundance anywhere, what value is there in the "sacrifice" of another animal?

Back when the Quran was revealed most people only occasionally ate meat, animals were an important source of income used for their byproducts mainly when alive, all the while having an emotional and psychological worth, both for their beautiful appearance and the notion that through them a society can be self-sufficient 16:5-8,66,40:79-81. People had more interest, abstract and concrete, in having them as a long term asset than killing them for their meat, hence there was no need nor would it have been sustainable to breed them freneticaly in order to slaughter them soon after. Owners personally used as well as traded their milk and milk products.

As a note for the vegan activists, Cows usually produce more milk than what is needed for the calf, especially those that are selectively bred for their milk production capacities. On responsible and ethical dairy farms, calves are fed their mothers’ milk, and the excess is then shipped to the processor for human consumption. After this, cows are inseminated or bred once a year, but only if their health allows. This mimics the natural cycle of a cow giving birth once a year. In the wild, a cow is bred as soon as she comes into heat after giving birth to a calf, regardless of her health or her ability to carry a calf to term. Sustainable farms only do so with healthy and ready cows, and only after a few months have passed after she has given birth.

Other byproducts that people benefited from their livestock was of course wool, as well as feces for multiple ends including fabrics for housing and clothing, fertilizer, flammable source or building material. People of ancient times even found medicinal properties to derive from them, including their urine, a sterile fluid except in rare cases.

Livestock were the principal means of transportation of men, food and material, as well as played a crucial role in providing brute strength in agriculture and increasing productivity. In such an environment, which is still the case in many communities around the world, the rare occasional slaughter of such a precious commodity for private consumption, or on the occasion of the yearly or once in a lifetime pilgrimage of Mecca, was a deep and sincere God-conscious deed. The spiritual significance when done at the pilgrimage was a symbol of gratitude to God for one’s sustenance, and the personal sacrifice of sharing one’s means of subsistence and income with fellow humans

22:28-36"eat of them and feed the poor man who is contented and the beggar; thus have We made them subservient to you, that you may be grateful".

Just as Ibrahim had to leave aside his personal preference in submission to God, when he took his son and prepared him for sacrifice, people of the past and today are expected to do the same, although on a much lesser level, of setting aside their interests and preferences in submission to the divine directives. They are however expected to do so in a manner befitting Islamic morality and ethics, as will be shown later in matters of animal sacrifice.

Farm and domesticated animals nowadays  while alive, still provide the humans with many resources including the ones cited for our ancestors and much more as technology and science advances. Even indirectly, sustainable livestock grazing, using suitable types and numbers of livestock at the appropriate time of year, benefit the humans on many levels. Besides converting the forages from lands not suitable for tillage, ie lands which humans cannot use to grow food, into a nutrient-dense food, livestock grazing recycles nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other plant nutrients by returning them to the soil in their urine and feces and thus causing 2 major benefits for the land; fertilization, and building up of erosion-fighting organic matter. This helps maintaining on the grazing lands a healthy and balanced ecosystem for plants, insects, birds and other animals, even increasing their biodiversity. The resulting dense, lush pasture sward is an extremely efficient solar harvester, capturing sunlight and transforming it into plant energy, and in turn animal and then human energy. And because there’s a lot of sun-powered plant growth, perennial pastures sequester high amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. This type of rotationally managed pasture is even more carbon-productive than forests. A meadow is like a huge solar array. But this solar panel can feed people.

From a purely biological standpoint, all life, sentient or not, is solar energy temporarily stored in an impermanent form, and whose healthy maintenance depends on the consumption of life by life, sentient or not. The entire planetary system hangs on that principle, even for those beings whose diet is strictly plant based, including humans that adopt the vegan diet and whose meat and other animals byproducts substitutes require the death of life, even sentient life, during harvest and transport. In terms of productivity, rotationally managed and grazed pasture can compete with row-crops, in such terms as carbon sequestration, human food potential, and economic returns.

Besides these environmental factors, sustainable livestock gazing gently provides support for other types of agriculture as it removes plant material more gradually than cutting or burning and gives mobile species a better chance to move to other areas within the habitat. It can also be noted that by clearing dry brush and accumulated dead vegetation, livestock grazing also reduces the fire hazard of drought-stricken areas.