At Reuters FaithWorld blog - Dutch vote to ban ritual animal slaughter, Jews and Muslims unite in protest - and here's a bit from another story about the issue, this in the New Statesman - Is Kosher still kosher?...
The lower house of the Dutch parliament has voted by a large majority to ban the slaughter of animals without prior electric stunning, as practised by religiously observant Jews and Muslims. The Netherlands would not be the first European country to have such a law -- it is already banned in Sweden, Norway and Switzerland -- but the vote has inevitably reopened the debate on the balance that any modern society must strike between common standards and the rights of minorities to maintain their own traditions ...
The collision of secular society's evolving understanding of what's ethical and religious groups' faith traditions/teachings is rife in the news lately -- in this instance, my sympathies lie with secular society's ethics. Maybe I'm not objective because I'm a vegetarian. And I know this is about Judaism and Islam, neither of which have me as a member, but in many of these collisions between my own church and the state, the religious teachings are often based on a few time-sensitive bits of scripture that don't seem integral to the core faith, and when I weigh that against suffering, I want to end the suffering. I hope I don't offend anyone, but perhaps this is a case where the religious letter of the law is now frustrating the actual spirit of that law, -- eliminating unnecessary suffering.
- Marianne Thieme, leader of the Dutch Animal Rights Party, at a goat farm in Amstelveen, the Netherlands, December 11, 2006/Koen van Weel - Reuters
