23.12.10

Is it from the meat we eat?

Chicken Cottage, please continue,
To imbue, how far I am from true.

That which is lawful and good

That's what we are ordered to eat, and earn. Quranically, repeatedly.

Like in many areas of diasporic ritual practice, we seem to have ourselves convinced of the fiqui side of things, but abandoned the ethics of it. I really want some good meat. Vegetarianism alone is insufficient, I feel it virtuous but liberal abdication. This halal market lock in system needs systematic transformation.

This book on animal welfare by Al Hafiz Al Masri, one time imam of the Woking Mosque is a gem I must get hold of fully. Originally written in 1987, the Islamic Foundation republished it in 2007.

So what of halal (c), is it sufficient?

Its not just about the method of ritual slaughter (which is where a great deal of the whiteous indignation targets it wrath), but the entire end-to-end process including: rearing, husbandry, welfare, slaughter, packing, distribution, retail, disposal and consumption. Modernisation, commodification, urbanisation, migration and economisation seems to have squeezed the spirit our of how we eat.

The Serious Sausage Company  and  Willowbrook Farm are there already. I think the Canadians got there ages ago.

Bi ism Illah, (with)in the names of Allah. Such a beautiful sanctification. Living in the bi.

Wandering around central with some lovers recently I felt angsty at having just attended an intracommunity dialogue with Tariq Ramadan and Shayk Haddad discussing what islah could be, and the ensuing social negotiation of what dinner could be. It was a disembodying experience. MachoMeatPax.

The ummahood feels disembodied and disembowelled. We have been De-ganjed and thrown into megacities where industrial farming and mechanised farming are norms avoidable only with steel and resources. We must resist this detawherance because its causing hypocrisy. Tawherence being integrity between belief and practice.

The literal truth and the the logic of our embodied practice link (un)ethical consumption to perpetuation of (in)justice to ensuing human behaviour.

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