I think the position that Islam takes on the matter is that of nature. This is the way I explain it which non-Muslims tend to easily understand (except the most extreme of activists). That is to say, in nature, every living thing that isn’t a plant, eats another living thing. Therefore there is no inherent wrong in eating another living thing whether a plant or an animal. The ecological term for this fact of nature is “the food chain”. Just as it is not wrong for a cat to each a fish, it is not inherently wrong for a human to eat a cow. That we can digest and gain nutrients from it, is proof that it is a food to humans. Further, in some parts of the world, relying on non-animal food alone will mean starvation or malnourishment, such as nomads on the desert steppes, or arctic peoples, and archipelagic peoples like my ancestors.

Therefore a universal human religion will of course not require a diet that excludes entire human nations, or exclude humans from entire geographies, which a ban on eating animals will accomplish. That is why Muslims are *not* vegetarian. We don’t see ourselves as “above” the rest of the living things, rather that we are “like” the creatures we share the earth with. Death and the eating of living things are considered perfectly normal natural order.

On the other hand, Muslims among humans, are additionally taught to refrain from eating *all and any* animals. Banned for us on theological grounds among theoretically valid foods are blood, carcasses (animals that died but without slaughter thus it is uncertain what it died of), food offered to worship false dieties, and swine. (There is a further restriction from hadith.) There may be some kind of health reason that we can deduce from some of the banned things, but the primary reason is scriptural.

On top of and secondary to the scriptural prohibition, we are taught to slaughter even the permitted animals in a certain way. reasons cited are varied, and may all be correct: to minimise unnecessary suffering of the animal (the pre-slaughter treatment and tool quality), to reduce the potential for disease (the efficient draining of blood), to taqwa and mindfulness that a life was taken by the Creator’s permission for our sustenance (the need to speak Allah’s name before the slaughter – but which is not necessary for seafood or plants). Note that the Muslim view may consider any action for further reduction of suffering that does not prevent the other objectives of the method, e.g. the blood draining. This is why some schools allow stunning if it can be assured the animal will not die from the stunning itself, but decapitation is not an acceptable slaughter method.

However, muscle spasms after slaughter is a reaction of the nervous system. All the fuss about slaughtering so that “it does not happen” is really about making us humans feel better but it has nothing to do with the animal’s experience. It’s dead. Nerves need only send signals to the spinal cord, not the brain, to generate spasms. check out these example two articles:
http://io9.com/5862418/10-bodily-functions-that-continue-after-death
http://vetmedicine.about.com/cs/lossandgrief/a/euthanasia.htm
animals have the post-mortem involuntary responses similar to humans, and vice versa. note that in neither context is the muscle spasming treated as an issue of suffering, rather an involuntary reaction of the corpse just like the other reactions. only in the animal rights/slaughter context is this somehow a big deal.

This is not to say that Muslims as a community do not have shortcomings in view of the above. I think we should in fact care a bit more as a community about the treatment of animals *before* they are slaughtered, rather than just check up on the zabihah part of it. Can you imagine the ummah described in this article, the teacher shown in the video, would accept as a norm, eating eggs from chickens kept in tiny battery cages, kept alive by medication, in deplorable conditions? How many places doing Eidul Adha slaughter do so while other cows could see the slaughter or hear the slaughtered cow’s sounds even though this is not allowed by Sunnah.

And secondly, while Muslims are not vegetarians, neither should we be meat-eaters in excess. Sunnah shows that the Prophet ate meat, but not always, and generally ate sparingly, his regular meals tending to include only a little or no meat. Livestock production on an industrial scale has many undesired environmental effects, often cruel, and sometimes even unhealthy, but can still be counted as zabihah if the slaughter part complied. those of us in urban communities have a complicity to these negative effects, which can be greatly reduced if we chose more sustainable meat options, and/or ate less of it.

In summary, the way I have distilled the Islamic belief system on this matter is that, Muslims do not consider ourselves “outside” of creation in that we should remove ourselves from the natural food chain as something “exemplary”. But as khalifah on Earth we are commanded to a certain standard of behaviour and rules with respect to *how* we take the food from the earth.

@Sabirah: Because the Quran commands us to eat from the lawful and be grateful for Allah’s bounty, which includes certain animals!

Just a thought, vegans kill life too. Every plant they eat is a living creature too. Or are plants less worthy of life than animals? On what basis and with what knowledge does the creation decide for him/herself what of Allah’s other creation is lawful or unlawful?

Allah knows best

Please Sis, keep protecting it. All the cats, dogs, and all animals need our compassionate, loving help and support.

as salaamu alaykum,

Love this comment! Maybe we should work on a Muslim lolcats feature for SuhaibWebb.com…. 🙂

as salaamu alaykum,

That’s a great point ZAI. One of my teachers says that all of the problems and issues we see in the Muslim world and among our communities today can in many ways be traced back to a “crisis of akhlaq” and I think that’s very true.