Credit: The author and Jimmy Wales. "Humans must make peace with the animals before they can make peace with other humans." I often describe myself as a lifelong vegetarian but that’s not true. After disliking meat through my entire childhood, I finally made the connection about killing as a teenager. If I am not willing to pay taxes for soldiers to kill in my name in Vietnam, how can I pay the butcher to do killing I would not do myself? And so I was a vegetarian. One can of Franco-American Spaghetti with meat to one without. The health benefits I’m still learning about. It felt to me that I was doing something personally to stop the process of violence in the world. Could you, or have you, killed fowl or pigs or cows? Hunted to birds or deer? Dragged seals out onto the ice and slaughtered them? I doubt it. Most people buy meat plastic-wrapped in styrofoam trays. Vegetarianism in Islam I was in Karachi and Iran for work. I knew nothing at all about Islam. I saw a skinny old man leading three camels. The camels were decorated with colours on their hides and bright tassels. Through some sign language, I asked the old boy what he was doing with his camels. He told me it was Eid and he was taking them to be killed and eaten! I had drunk camel milk but never considered people ate them! Islamic jurists consider vegetarianism permissible but not superior to meat-eating. The religious arguments for the vegetarian diet include the requirement for compassion imposed on Muslims by Quran and sunnah and the concept of stewardship (khalifa). Modern vegetarian Muslims often encounter prejudice against their diet. A particular case is the tradition of killing an animal during the celebration of the Eid al-Adha, which many Muslims see as compulsory or at least an emphasised sunnah. However, the Quran and the hadith strongly encourage Muslims to treat animals humanely and the Islamic prophet Muhammad spoke against recreational hunting. Vegetarians were historically often seen as heretics; examples include al-Ma'arri. The view that vegetarianism is un-Islamic stems from the historic animosity between Muslims and practitioners of Buddhism and Hinduism. Modern Muslim vegetarians and vegans often have to face prejudice and hostility. Several fatwas issued by jurists such as Ebrahim Desai, Hamza Yusuf, Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, Muzammil H. Siddiqi, Muhammad al-Munajjid and Ali Khamenei [remember him?] state that abstaining from meat is permissible for Muslis as long as they do not deem it an obligation or a way of being a better Muslim than others. Sufi philospher Inayat Khan concluded that not eating meat is desirable because meat "hinders spiritual progress" while the act of killing is unkind. Modern proponents of Islamic veganism cite the excessive suffering of factory-farmed animals, the environmental harms of the meat and dairy industries and the zoonotic infections as the reasons to switch to a vegan diet. Vegetarian believers express their concerns about whether any meat from inhumanely raised animal can be halal, even if it has been certified as such. Modern Muslim academics who advocate for vegetarianism include Duke McLeod and Mohamed Ghilan. There are fierce critics, too. Iraqi Islamic scholar Mawil Izzi Dien ruled that Islamic vegetarianism is completely unacceptable. Izz al-Din ibn 'Abd al-Salam: "The unbeliever who prohibits the slaughtering of an animal [for no reason but] to achieve the interest of the animal is incorrect because in so doing he gives preference to a lower, khasis, animal over a higher, nafis, animal" in "Qawa'id al-ahkam fi masalih al-anam" Ibn Hazm believed that only creatures who can show an understanding of Islamic laws are subject to it. Whew! Jewish vegetarianism Vegetarianism was not traditionally a component of mainstream pre-modern Judaism, though the laws of kashrut limit consumption of certain animals or their products, with precise requirements for how animals are to be sacrificed and slaughtered (shechita). According to Rabbis Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz and Abraham Isaac Kook, the complexity of these laws was intended to discourage the consumption of meat. Kashrut may also be designed to discourage killing living beings. There are also examples of vegetarianism as an ideal in ancient Judaism. Genesis 1:29 states "And God said: Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree that has seed-yielding fruit—to you it shall be for food." Many scholars see the Torah as thereby pointing to vegetarianism as an ideal, as Adam and Eve did not partake of the flesh of animals as all humans and animals were originally commanded by God to only eat plants. According to some interpretations, God's original plan was for mankind to be vegetarian, and God only later gave permission for man to eat meat in a covenant with Noah (Genesis 9:1–17) as a temporary concession because of Man's weak nature. This concessionary view of meat-consumption is based on the scriptural analysis of several Rishonim. Some writers assert that the Jewish prophet Isaiah was a vegetarian, on the basis of passages in the Book of Isaiah that extol nonviolence and reverence for life, such as Isaiah 1:11, 11:6–9, 65:25, and 66:3. Some of these writers refer to "the vegetarian Isaiah", "the notorious vegetarian Isaiah", and "Isaiah, the vegetarian prophet". Isaiah meant also that humans must sit with the lamb, the kid, the ox -- because humans must make peace with the animals before they can make peace with other humans. Critics of this view argue that none of the Biblical verses in question refer to a human diet: they either condemn certain animal sacrifices, or else prophesise that carnivorous animals will become herbivorous at the end of days. A number of ancient Jewish sects, including early Karaite sects, regarded the eating of meat as prohibited as long as Zion was in ruins and Israel in exile. Perhaps today, all those bets are off. A number of medieval scholars of Judaism, such as Joseph Albo and Isaac Arama, regard vegetarianism as a moral ideal, not out of a concern for animal welfare per se but out of a concern for the moral character of the slaughterer. Rabbeinu Asher ben Meshullam was said never to have tasted meat. So many rabbis have advocated vegetarianism is is beyond my scope to list them here. David Cohen wrote an influential essay, A Vision of Vegetarianism and Peace (first published in installments in 1903–04), summarizing Abraham Isaac Kook's ideas about the "coming of the new society" in which humankind becomes vegan. “I’m a vegetarian for health reasons. Not my health, but the health of the chickens.” Among many others, Isaac Bashevis Singer, this writer’s favourite author, Franz Kafka and…Natalie Portman were vegetarians. Albert Einstein was a vegetarian for the last year of his life, although he had advocated vegetarianism in principle since 1930. The first Jewish vegetarian cookbook compiled by Fania Lewando, The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook, was first published in 1938 in Vilnius. Its English translation appeared in 2015. A number of groups promote Jewish vegetarianism, not an exhaustive list: Jewish Veg is noted for its 2007 film A Sacred Duty and for sponsoring university lecture tours by figures including Ori Shavit. Amirim, an Israeli vegetarian moshav (village), was founded in 1958. The founders of Amirim were motivated to create a vegetarian village because of their love for animals and concern for animal rights, as well as for health reasons. Both religious and non-religious families live at Amirim. Vegan Friendly is an organization in Tel Aviv that works to make veganism mainstream, organizes an annual "Vegan Congress", and promotes the vegan celebration of Jewish holidays. Jewish vegetarianism and veganism have become especially popular among Israeli Jews. In 2016, an op-ed argued that Israel was "the most vegan country on Earth", as five percent (!) of its population eschewed all animal products. That number had more than doubled since 2010, when only 2.6 percent of Israelis were either vegan or vegetarian. Veganism is particularly popular in the city of Tel Aviv, which has been described as the "vegan capital of the world”. Yum, felafels, though I find those at Maoz Vegetarian in Amsterdam tastier. The Israeli rabbi Asa Keisar is a rare example of an Orthodox rabbi who has argued that eating meat and animal byproducts is no longer permitted according to Jewish sources, because of the cruelty inflicted on animals. Charles Patterson’s book, Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust is an intentionally provocative titles. But its comparison to the fate of meat animals is accurate. vegetarianism is consistent with the sacred teachings and highest ideals of Judaism, including compassion, health, life, conservation of resources, tzedakah, kashrut, peace, and justice. One mitzvah cited by vegetarians is tza'ar ba'alei hayyim; the injunction not to cause "pain to living creatures". The laws of shechita are meant to prevent the suffering of animals. However, factory farming and high-speed mechanised kosher slaughterhouses have been criticized for failing to meet the essence of shechita. Jonathan Safran Foer , author of Eating Animals, narrated the short documentary film If This Is Kosher..., which records abuses within the kosher meat industry. However, several commandments specifically call for meat to be eaten, such as eating of the Passover sacrifice and other animal sacrifices. The halakha encourages the eating of meat at the Sabbath and Festival meals; thus some Orthodox Jews who are otherwise vegetarian will nevertheless consume meat at these meals. Some Jews see more moderate views to vegetarianism as the ideal. In 2015, members of the Liberal Judaism synagogue in Manchester founded The Pescetarian Society, citing pescetarianism as originally a Jewish diet, and pescetarianism as a form of vegetarianism. The bottom line? There is never need to kill your fellow creatures, be they human or animal.
