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Europe is in a muddle over ritual slaughter
- rusk 5y agoThe price you pay in striving for social integration!
- wongarsu 5y agoYes, if you strife for integration you have long discussions in your society how to weigh opposing interests. I'm not sure what reasonable alternatives exist.
- vadfa 5y agoStriving for keeping the homogeneous culture that has existed for centuries and ejecting those who do not accept it is a reasonable alternative.
- rjtavares 5y agoHonest question: has any empire (or powerful nation) ever been homogenous without genocide?
- vadfa 5y agoI think we can keep out immigrants who do not want to fit in without having to resort to genocide.
- evgen 5y agoI think several millennia of European history show that they actually cannot do this without resorting to genocide. This has literally happened in Europe within my lifetime so forgive me if I ignore your unfounded assertions that 'this time' Europe will get it right.
- ardit33 5y agoJapan? Their natives were few in numbers (less than 2%), so it can be considered a Homogenous nation.
- brabel 5y ago[flagged]
- FredPret 5y agoAre you serious? I’m no social conservative, but labelling that as Nazism just degrades your own political capital. People are allowed to expect immigrants to fit in.
- dx034 5y agoBut it's not just about immigrants. You also forbid people born in your country to develop other habits or change religion.
- mantas 5y agoIf a bunch of locals decide to bring back old slaughtering methods (or dealing with spouses or skipping judicial system to settle issues and so on), I'm pretty use that'd be banned in no time.
- Ancapistani 5y agoSee also: the birth and growth of the Mormon religion in the US.
- lordwarnut 5y agoWell the homogenisation of society is a common aspect of fascist ideologies.
- FredPret 5y agoThat would be like me calling every lefty a Marxist. It doesn't help. At the core of every ideology - left and right - are some valid ideas - that is how it got adherents in the first place. A certain degree of social homogeneity is needed because it represents a shared basic idea about how civilization is to proceed. Now, the Nazis enforced their extreme vision of absolute social homogeneity by means of death chambers... nobody in this thread suggested anything even hinting at that.
- gpderetta 5y agoJews have lived all around europe for centuries.
- ekianjo 5y agoLived and been subject to massacre for centuries and this well before ww2.
- Joeri 5y agoApartheid has been tried before. Like communism it doesn’t work out in practice the way the theory predicts.
- chuckee 5y agoYou have it backwards: ethnic violence is more prevalent in diverse countries without boundaries separating different groups: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0095660 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... Look at ex-Yugoslavia. Is it not working out? Are the people worse off in their separate countries, than when they were genociding each-other under a common flag? "Good fences make good neighbors" wasn't invented out of thin air.
- sofixa 5y agoPeople in Yugoslavia weren't genociding each other in regular times (outside of WW2 and the Yugoslav wars), there was just ethnic tension. Furthermore, present post-Yugoslav countries aren't homogenous, and there's still ethnic tensions there ( in Bosnia, or Serbia and Kosovo). I'm not sure "working out" is how I'd put it.
- chuckee 5y agoInteresting standard. So only genocides during "regular times" count? And as long as there are tensions, you can't say things are working out? Anything short of perfect harmony might as well be civil war and genocide?
- arkades 5y agoHow many centuries-to-millennia do Jews have to live in Europe before theyre viewed as having the same rights as all other Europeans, rather than being immigrants in need of assimilation? If this is the baseline level of Othering involved in the thinking around this, you understand why people view this as an expression of anti-semitism. “Respect other people’s cultures and beliefs, unless they’re Jewish” isn’t a good look for the left wing.
- N0tAThr0wAway 5y ago>I'm not sure what reasonable alternatives exist. Not import backwards, stone age cultures into your country.
- dx034 5y agoNot every muslim was born outside of Europe. In open societies, people also change religions even if their home country was dominated by a different one.
- josh_fyi 5y agoJews have lived in Europe for 2000 years. Who's importing whom? https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/what-disraeli-actually-said/ https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/what-disraeli-actua... "In the course of his unrestrained invective, he referred to Disraeli’s Jewish ancestry. Disraeli replied, ‘Yes, I am a Jew, and while the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.'”
- Zababa 5y agoI don't think we should apply the same standards to Jews that have been in Europe for a long time, and Muslims that are a very recent addition, especially when you compare the numbers.
- tremon 5y agoSouth-Eastern Europe has had a large muslim (because Ottoman) population for centuries; which part of Europe are you referring to?
- magicalhippo 5y agoI mean, we've just had two male priests lose their job because they refused to work with female priests[1][2], citing the bible as reason. Pretty sure that would have been considered quite radical a hundred years ago. [1]: https://www.nrk.no/vestland/etter-avtale-med-biskopen_-mikael-bruun-er-ferdig-i-den-norske-kyrkja-1.15688430 https://www.nrk.no/vestland/etter-avtale-med-biskopen_-mikae... [2]: https://www.nrk.no/mr/omstridd-prest-i-orskog-gar-av_-ville-ikkje-samarbeide-med-kvinner-1.15694348 https://www.nrk.no/mr/omstridd-prest-i-orskog-gar-av_-ville-...
- koheripbal 5y agoThey lost their salary and legal employment, but the thing about religion is that you are not beholden to any authority other than the one you choose, so they can continue to practice being priests.
- vadfa 5y agoBecause letting people do whatever they want is not even on the radar of these bureaucrats.
- wongarsu 5y agoLet the religious people do whatever they want or the animal rights activists?
- vadfa 5y agoThe former obviously. The latter are the ones who want to restrict the freedoms of others.
- wongarsu 5y agoThe latter would argue that the former are violating the animal's right to a pain-free death.
- vadfa 5y agoAnimals are... animals.
- wongarsu 5y agoI guess it comes down to whether you think of animals as soulless automata or as beings with conscious thought and emotions, worthy of (some amount of) empathy. And while I can't say much about sheep, in the last ~50 years we have found that some kind of animals are remarkably far on the latter side
- bobthechef 5y agoRight? You can argue that it is immoral for a human being to inflict needless suffering on animals, but I don’t know where right enter the picture. Ever watch a nature show? You think the alligator tearing pieces off a living zebra is violating the rights of the zebra? Or even that it’s immoral for it to do so?
- brabel 5y agoWhy would a religion dictate how you should kill animals, and why do people believe this is a religious matter rather than an animal-rights matter? I just can't understand people sometimes.
- FredPret 5y agoThere are plenty of religious diktats in the Bible and other books that nobody follows. For instance, if you curse at your parents, the Old Testament calls for you to be stoned to death. This one is conveniently overlooked though
- llimos 5y agoIt actually isn't. Orthodox Jews, who are the most literal devotees of the Old Testament (as interpreted by the Talmud), do consider this a capital offence. For technical reasons the death penalty is not administered today (and even when it was, the conditions that needed to be met meant that it hardly ever happened in practice). But this doesn't take away from the severity of the offence.
- FredPret 5y agoI'm saying that the vast majority of people who live by a book will only follow the parts of said book that they like or find appropriate. How many Christians have you ever seen laying hands on bodies at funerals, trying to resurrect the dead?
- llimos 5y agoChesterton's fence probably applies here.
- bencollier49 5y agoQuite. No scholar on this matter but they presumably began at least in part as a welfare measure.
- chuckee 5y agoI find the appeal to religious freedom contemptible. An animal does not suffer any less if it has to be conscious during its slaughter for religious reasons, rather than secular ones.
- mytailorisrich 5y agoI would agree. IMHO, religious freedom is an individual freedom that applies to your own private life only. The treatment of animals is not seen as a matter of private life and individual freedom by society and in law, and therefore does not depend on a person's religion or beliefs.
- ajsnigrutin 5y agoI'm not sure if they do it the same way everywhere, but at the only (industrial) slaughterhouse i've ever been at, they use a special kind of gun on the head of the animal, which basically destroys the brain, before they actually slaughter the animal. Compared to traditional methods (cutting the throat of a conscious animal), this seems a better solution.
- NikolaNovak 5y agoI've started mentally translating all instances " because of my religion" to "because I really really want it", as that is what it effectively translates to. There's just no easy line to draw otherwise between "because religion" and any other personal desire. It's not an appeal to any logic or meaning or external truth or specialness or benefit of humankind or world etc. But it's become this magic phrase that causes us to pause and consider requests that would otherwise be automatically denied on their own ground.
- FDSGSG 5y agoWhy does this get downvoted? Does there exist a reasonable counterargument to this? I'd really like to hear it.
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
- birdyrooster 5y agoYou can outlaw it but they will still just do it anyways but with more stealth. Religion is damn stupid but we have bigger fish to fry I think for workers and health of humans.
- dx034 5y agoIllegal behavior is no excuse not to act. Many things are done illegally, it doesn't mean they should just be legalized. Outlawing these practices will inevitably lead to a decline in its use, just not by 100%.
- FDSGSG 5y agoSo what? The scale will be slashed. If you ban the sales of such meat, the business will be in a really tough spot.
- Havoc 5y agoAncient writings make for good Hollywood movies and bad 21st century laws.
- h2odragon 5y agoIf you don't see this as a conflict of faiths, you better check your privilege about what you believe. I'm quite happy that there are few who believe animals should be sacrificed with maximal suffering and their pain displayed for the congregation to participate in. If we're going to give full faith and credence to the religious tho, we'll have to admit there's some out there who do need to splatter some critters, and they've as much right to their interpretation as we do to our gentler notions. Of course if we're just deciding that there should be just one set of beliefs and you can be whatever faith you like so long as you think speak and behave like everyone else, that's different.
- eesmith 5y agoI remember this back in the 1980s in Miami, regarding Santería. Ahh, Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Lukumi_Babalu_Aye_v._City_of_Hialeah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Lukumi_Babalu_Ay... . Basically, the Hialeah City Council thought Santería practices were un-American, un-Cuban, and "abhorrent to its citizens", so banned "sacrifices of animals for any type of ritual", but made sure to allow: "Kosher slaughterhouses, regular slaughterhouses, hunting, fishing, pest extermination, euthanasia of stray animals, and feeding live rabbits to greyhounds." The Santería church sued, and in 1993 the Supreme Court "concluded that the city's ordinances violated the Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution." The Wikipedia entry also points to the more recent Merced v. Kasson from 2009, where the judge ruled the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act meant that the city's prohibition on the slaughter of four-legged animals "substantially burden plaintiff's free exercise of religion without advancing a compelling governmental interest using the least restrictive means." > ... Somewhat similarly in 2009, a freedom of religion case related to animal sacrifice was taken to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in the case of Merced v. Kasson ... The court ruled that the ordinances "substantially burden plaintiff's free exercise of religion without advancing a compelling governmental interest using the least restrictive means", as required by the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
- NikolaNovak 5y agoFascinating that this is flagged. Any other reason than religious folks who want to sweep it under the rug?