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MONTH: April 2008

Letters to the Editor

Training Saddam’s royal guard

Thank you so much for sending ANIMAL PEOPLE to me here in Australia. I encourage everyone to subscribe. Many people I know who love animals and belong to animal welfare groups tell me they have never read anything quite like ANIMAL PEOPLE, that covers so many global issues in depth. Your reports from war zones pull the heartstrings of soldiers I know who have made note of their own experiences with animal suffering and blatant cruelty during war or training.

My former husband served in Iraq as one of Saddam Hussein’s royal guard. He told me they were trained by being given a goat, then a pig, then a donkey, whom they had to run down and wrestle to death with their bare hands. He felt bad about killing these animals. He described them as “My friends when I was a child, and not my enemies. Never my enemies.”

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--Rebekah Blackwolf Mitchell
Victoria, Australia

Islam & dogs

The commentary “What did the Prophet Mohammed really say about dogs?” by Merritt Clifton in the January/February 2008 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE is entirely correct in its factual data and its interpretation.

Another anecdote about a dog is quite telling. Caliph Umar ibn Al-Khattab was a close friend, follower, and father-in-law of the the Prophet Mohammed. During his 10-year caliphate, which started about a year and a half after the passing away of the Prophet, Islam spread rapidly across the whole Middle East, Iran, Egypt, and the rest of North Africa.

Near the end of his life, Umar ibn Al-Khattab was asked why he still looked worried even though the Islamic world was at its zenith and he was regarded as the great leader of Islam. He replied: “If on the day of Judgement, God says to me that there was a dog dying of thirst somewhere in the Islamic world, and if He asks me what I did to save the dog, I must have a good answer!”

The problem is that a miniscule number of Muslims know and understand what Clifton reported. Sadly, there continues to be widespread bias and ignorance, which I am afraid is not likely to go away anytime soon.

--Kamran R. Siddiqi
Dubai, UAE

The future of Islamic animal sacrifice

I was happy to read the detailed and well-researched editorial feature on the future of Islamic animal sacrifice in the January/ February 2008 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE. This editorial feature cleared up several questions about Quranic injunctions on sacrificing animals. It should come as an eyeopener to a lot of practicing Muslims that as in every other aspect of life, the key to human progress lies in moving with changing times. Modern times strictly uphold animal rights, andsacrificing animals to feed a ritual that had sanctity centuries ago is not relevant now. As the feature rightly points out, it is time to appease Allah by donating to animal charity, rather than by committing sacrifice..

--Brinda Upadhyaya, President
Assn. for Service
& Healing of Animals
903-3B Green Acres
Lokhandwalla Complex
Andheri (W),
Mumbai 400053, India
<ashaforanimals@yahoo.co.in>

The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA, & what happened in Europe during the Middle Ages

I very much appreciate ANIMAL PEOPLE’s review of my book The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA. When my friend of long standing Merritt Clifton said that it will be the standard against which future histories of animal advocacy are judged, that was both gracious on his part and gratifying to me as the author.

As to the “glaring omissions” that Merritt found, I can only quote from the introduction: “. . . of necessity, there have been omissions, and I regret every one...If an advocate, group, or campaign is missing that you believe should be included...I am sure you are right. But had I given every leader, group, and campaign the space they deserve, ‘the longest struggle’ would be the reader’s effort to make it to the end of the book.”

As to “errors,” there is one that I truly regret. That is my misstatement regarding Michael Mountain’s age and background. I have apologized to him privately, and I would like to take this opportunity to apologize publicly.

As readers of the book know, I am a big fan of Michael Mountain and Best Friends. The other “errors” mentioned are actually disagreements.

To cite just one example: The claim that the Cathars were immigrants from India and that Catharism taught animal protection is supported by no credible evidence of which I am aware. The Cathars were ethnic Europeans and spiritual descendents of the Manichaeans and other Gnostic groups. They were vegetarian, for arcane theological reasons, but they were not animal advocates. There was no significant animal advocacy in Europe during the Middle Ages..

--Norm Phelps
Funkstown, Maryland
<n.phelps@myactv.net>

Clifton responds:

Stating “There was no significant animal advocacy in Europe during the Middle Ages” requires defining “animal advocacy” to exclude anything benefiting animals that was (or is) promoted to benefit the human soul.

Most prominent among the exclusions would be the influence of Islam, which discourages cruel spectacles involving animals. Most of Spain was under Islamic rule from 711 to 1492. Portugal was under Islamic rule for much of that time. Bullfighting is forbidden in Islam, as then-Egyptian head mufti Sheikh Nasr Farid Wassel reaffirmed in a November 1997 fatwa, and only emerged as a regionally characteristic pastime in the post-Islamic era, coincidental with the rise of the Spanish Inquisition.

Explains bullfighting his torian Mario Carrin, “The first his toric bullfight, c o r r i d a, took place in Vera, Logroo, in 1133, in honor of the coronation of king Alfonso VIII,” a Christian who drove the Muslims from that region. “From that point on,” Carrin continues,“kings organized corridas ...After the Spanish War of the Reconquest, the celebration of corridas e x p a n d e d throughout Spain.”

Much of the other cruelty to animals notoriously practiced as part of Spanish and Portuguese vil lage festivals originated as persecutions of alleged heretics, especially Muslims and Jews. Animals were substituted when alleged heretics became scarce.

Islamic influence on the treatment of animals elsewhere in Europe is less well documented, but by 1396 Islamic rule extended from Albania and the Danube River east, and after the capture of Constantinople in 1453, Islam was regionally dominant for more than 400 years.

There was extensive legal advocacy for animals, which is“advocacy” in the strictest sense of the term, in Christian medieval Europe. This was documented by E.P. Evans in The Criminal Prosecution& Capital Punishment of Animals (1906), reprinted in 1986 by Faber & Faber with a foreword by Nicholas Humphrey. Humphrey saw in the mostly quite serious trials of animals, some of whom were acquitted, an ongoing effort to define the bounds of the animal/human relationship.

Reviewers for animal advocacy media recognized in the arguments some ideas which resurfaced in animal rights and ani mal welfare legal theory. (Those reviews drew my notice to the book.)

The history of the Cathari divides into two portions. From 1143, when the Cathari first chal lenged Catholic dominion in Europe, until they were exterminated by the Albigensian Crusade in 1329, they were chiefly ethnic Europeans. But their origins are less clear.

Mainstream sources such as <www.cathar.info/1204_origins.htm> acknowl edge that their teachings “probably spread from the eastern part of the Byzantine Empire,” which then extended from Bulgaria to Persia, and that Catharism “may have orig inated in a form of Manichean belief, itself a melange of Persian Zoroastrianism and early Christian Gnostic dualism.”

Most theological discus sion of the Cathari accepts the view that they practiced a heretical vari ant of Christianity, but I am hardly the first to notice that the Cathari“preached a Jain-like creed of non-violence,” as historian Frank Lynn wrote in The New Statesman of December 18, 2000, reviewing The Yellow Cross: the story of the last Cathars 1290-1329, by Rene Weis. Weis apparently observed this too.

As far back as 1932, when scholarly study of the influence of eastern religions on Christianity was relatively new, Maurice Magre in Magicians, Seers, and Mystics described the Cathari as “western Buddhists, who introduced a blend of Gnostic Christianity into the Oriental doctrine.”

The distance from Persia to the last Cathari villages in France is about the same, by the same trade routes, as from Persia to India, through the Thari and Rajasthan deserts, where the Bishnoi of Rajasthan still practice a vegetarian religion similar to Jainism..

Perry Fina

This is to thank everyone at ANMAL PEOPLE for the lovely things you said abut my husband, Perry Fina, in your January/ February 2008 obituary.

Perry went with Merritt Clifton to Puerto Rico in 1998 to look at how the animals in the shelters there were treated and how they were just abandoned and left to die in the streets. The conditions in the shelters and streets were deplorable. In the May 1998 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, Clifton mentioned Perry and Michael Arms, a former employee of the North Shore Animal League. Perry had just started an outreach program at the League, called the Pet Savers Foundation. When he returned from that trip, he was even more determined and devoted to saving animals all over the world. He made many friends and was touched by all of them.

Perry loved his work at North Shore and loved all the people there and those he came to know all over the U.S. and the world.

Many people have written to me about him and how much he will be missed.

Even while he battled cancer for two years, Perry continued to work hard, and was even more committed to saving the lives of animals. He lived for this, and I think it was keeping him alive.

Perry has given his children and me a beautiful legacy, to somehow and in some way continue his work of saving animals, and in our small way we will do that.

I am enclosing a small donation to help support the wonderful work of ANIMAL PEOPLE. Once again I would like to offer you all
my deepest and most heartfelt thanks.

--Linda Fina
New Milford, Connecticut

Empathy for all species needed

Animal rights organizations publicize abuses to animals raised for food or hunted for sport through undercover investigations, videos, court cases, legislation, political outreach, etc.

However, one category of groups involved with animals remains largely untouched by these efforts. Most animal shelters, sanctuaries, and rescue groups show little to no interest in species other than those for whom they directly care. Their fund-raising events serve chopped-up, sliced, and diced animal parts for dinner, their publications encourage adoptions of dogs who can accompany people on hunting and fishing trips, and their pre-Thanksgiving adoption promotions declare that it would be wonderful to have a new pet while the family is feasting on Thanksgiving turkey.

Organizations providing direct care to dogs, cats, horses, birds, and other species express empathy for these animals, but for many it is a limited empathy, protecting and advocating for a few specific kinds of animals while not considering the needs and rights of others.

Trying to avoid offending potential donors, such organizations also tend to avoid the idea that all animals should be treated with compassion––overlooking, for example, that a potential major donor hunts.

Some groups point to the stress of their work as a rationalization for avoiding wider expression of humane values. Others appear to have such a strong emotional identification with just one kind of animal that they act as if the possibility of expanding their empathy to other living beings has never occurred to them.

Typically in an attempt to avoid taking a firm stand on humane values for all animals-–but not wanting to appear indifferent to those values, which is a juggling act in itself––these groups will serve both meat and a vegetarian dish at their functions.

This does not promote kindness. Rather it puts their food on the same level as that served in the local diner. Nearly all restaurants, including steak houses, have non-meat options. The meat-eaters eat meat and the vegetarians choose vegetarian. When an animal organization serves both meat and vegetarian food, it communicates to its donors that any food choice––no matter the animal suffering involved––is acceptable.

Further, it is also telling its donors that only the animals cared for at its shelter or sanctuary should be cherished, and other animals can be trashed.

Rather than a fund-raising event doubling as an opportunity to raise awareness about the misery of millions of animals, so that more people can develop humane ethics, it becomes simply a tool for raising money.

Organizations that provide direct care for some animals and are not consistent in expressing respect for all animals inevitably undermine the efforts of animal rights groups to stop institutionalized abuse.

Unless the millions of people who have contact with animal shelters, nonfarm animal sanctuaries, and rescue groups are educated about the cruelty of factory farming, slaughterhouses, and hunting, the adoption of humane values by the general public and legislators will be limited.

It would be wonderful if a system could be created for disseminating information from animal rights groups to direct care groups in a way that actively involves the latter in specific issues and long-term campaigns. There would need to some give-and-take as to whether a local group is willing to promote a larger humane goal, how its efforts would be supported, and how disagreements could be managed
without losing momentum.

Regular meetings to discuss creative ideas for advancing the goal, as well as to review progress, would promote effectiveness..

--Irene Muschel
New York, N.Y.
<benirv@hotmail.com>

Cruelty to sea turtles

Please speak up against cruelty to marine turtles.

An investigation by animal welfare volunteers at the Vizhinjam fishing harbour in Trivandrum, Kerala, recently found that the local fishers are still selling marine turtles, and that there had been more than 100 catches in the past few weeks or months. We could spot more than 150 shells and carcasses of turtles. Two were exhibited to be sold at a local market shed just behind a police outpost. Our findings are shown in videos posted at YouTube and in photographs posted at <www.saveturtleskerala.blogspot.com>.

--R.Abhed Kiran
The Bhima Club
Trivandrum, Kerala, India
<thebhimaclub@aol.in>
<www.freewebs.com/thebhimaclub>

Chinchilla Chat Line

As always I do so enjoy receiving your fabulous newspaper and read it with glee before passing it on to all and sundry! I am delighted to announce the 10th anniversary of Chinchilla Chat Line.

--Liz Arnold-Smith
Administrator
Chinchilla Chat Line
Chelston, Portsmouth Road
Esher, Surrey KT10 9AW
Phone: 0208 3987397
<Lizarnoldsmith@aol.com>
<www.chinchat.net>

Zoo director in jail

Thank you for your great March 2008 article “Could the Giza Zoo become a rescue center?” Former zoo director Moustafa Awad, whom you mentioned, is now in jail. He allegedly stole King Farouk’s furniture and antiquities, and sold them. There were rumors also about wild animal smuggling. Awad massacred the zoo. I can say he deserves being in prison.

--Amina Abaza
Society for the Protection
of Animal Rights in Egypt
16 Taha Hussein, Zamalek
Cairo, Egypt;
Phone: 20-12-381-3855
<spare@sparealife.org>
<www.sparealife.org>

Editor’s note:

Awad directed the Giza Zoo from 1995 to 2003. A translation from the December 17, 2007 of <www.alwatanvoice. com/arabic/news> by Animal Welfare Awareness Research Group of Egypt coordi nator Dina Zulficar affirms that “Awad was arrested on a variety of charges, including the possession of valuable contents from the royal rest house, and various properties of the zoo.”.

Katrina memorial ceremony

If you or an organization you are affiliated with h e l p e d during the 2005 storm season, we thank you. Tens of thousands of people came to our aid when the levees failed and most of New Orleans flooded, stranding thousands of residents, leaving more than 50,000 companion animals homeless, and killing countless others.

I hope you will accept my personal invitation to return to New Orleans and help us commemorate the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

We have commissioned artist Richard Chashoudian to sculpt a memorial statue to honor the animals lost during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The statue will be unveiled on August 29 in the chambers of the New Orleans City Council.

Further details about the events planned for the day are at our web site.

--Jeff Dorson, founder
Humane Society of Louisiana
P.O. Box 740321
New Orleans, LA 70174
Phone: 901-268-4432
<info@humanela.org>
<wwwHumanela.org>

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