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Muslims about to celebrate their holy festival scheduled for Oct 5, 2014. The reality of the festival comes from the story of Nabi Ibrahim and his son Ismael. Instead of sacrificing Ibrahim’s son, Allah instructed him to sacrifice a sheep, according to the story. This particular festival will be celebrated as Aidiladha.

Last year my conversation with the headmaster of SK Puchong became heated over the cow slaughtering issue in the school. I would like to urge the Education Department and all other politicians to respect the sanctity of the schools and not to turn the schools into slaughterhouses. The incident of Nabi Ibrahim happened on a particular day in an open area, but that story didn't take place in any school.

Many Umno politicians and Netizens had commented that this is a Muslim country, that we will do what we like. Some said if you don't like it, go back to India. Papagomo made many negative comments.

I would like to remind everyone that in our education syllabus there is no special injunction to slaughter cows in schools. It is not a religious issue but all parties should respect the schools where we gain education.

The law is equal to all citizen according to the federal constitution. Hindus cannot celebrate Thaipusam in national school and Chinese cannot celebrate their ghost festival in schools. So the Education Department and school headmasters should not not create double standards.

I did some research a after last year’s issue, which showed that Malaysian Muslims didn’t slaughter cows during school hours 15 years ago and going back to the British colonial period. I have collected information from Jordan, Morocco, Turkey, and Qatar, and people in those countries never slaughter animals in schools during school hours. This shows Malaysia is practicing a different Islam than Arabic and Muslim countries.

The Qurban festival is celebrated in mosques, suraus, residential halls and other places wherever it is convenient, and we never oppose it. But as a human rights and animal rights activist I will watch closely what will be your real intention to celebrate the extended festival period by slaughtering cows during school hours.

The cow slaughtering act is not in line with the education syllabus or school co-curriculum in any part of the world.

Performing cow slaughtering in the schools will make children psychologically traumatised. Even if the teachers and students were asked not to “watch” the slaughter, fine, but one can always “hear” the slaughter being carried out.

Any parliament in the world never approve such an inhumane act of slaughtering animals in the schools. It’s a great disgrace for the country. All schools should follow worldwide educational guidelines approved by the UN, and definitely animal slaughtering will not be part of the system. The Malaysian parliament should come to a decision to respect non-violence.

Cow slaughtering in schools can cause post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, which develops after a terrifying ordeal or when someone witnesses a harmful event that happened to animals or humans. Soldiers and victims of war have faced this syndrome, and even people working in slaughterhouses.


SARAVANAN FOREVER is an activist for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) Asia Pacific Network.

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