Battleangel

I noticed that the Swedish Animal Welfare Agency has made its ruling regarding Halal and Kosher practises in Sweden. Thankfully they still enforce the basic idea that animals have to be put to death in a way that they “be spared unnecessary discomfort and suffering.” So the deal is either for the animals to be stunned before slaughter or just forget about it and continue importing the goods.

Sweden’s Ombudsman against Ethnic Discrimination (DO) however feels otherwise. Some nonsense about culture and discrimination. Yeah yeah, we’ve heard it all. And the response from the Jewish Community of Stockholm is also predictably in line with the culture propaganda model and goes on about the right to practise different cultures and that Sweden is no longer a monocultural society. Fine. But that doesn’t give you the right to break fundamental values and rights. It is no different than if I started a religion where I proclaimed to have the right to go about decapitating people, claiming the right of the “Gathering.” No response as of yet from Muslim spokespersons. But what the Jewish council is trying to do here is so clearly subterfuge. They misrepresent the true nature of the activity, the opposition and their rights … and quite frankly I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop and them to label opponents anti-Semitic. Too bad that they are in the same boat as Muslims then. Well maybe not, since apparently most Muslims have accepted the technique involving stunning and thus conformed to Swedish law.

I’m usually a pretty tolerant person, but in the case of Islamic and Jewish ritual slaughter methods I have to draw a line in the sand. People can wear their headscarves, veils and silly hats but knowingly inflicting suffering (or fooling yourself that you don’t, I don’t care) on living things is where I draw the line. So I’ve been gravitating towards the animal rights crowd for some time now. I’m not quite there yet. But this is so clearly a step back in animal protection that it can’t be tolerated and simply whisked away with the magic wand of the multicultural society. For all the illogical steps taken to protect us from Islamic “terrorists”, here is one very logical step towards protecting animals from Jewish and Islamic fanatics.

Though I suspect we haven’t seen the last of this.