Public butchery not a good idea

I see that The Sun has run an article showing graphic pictures of the animal sacrifices taking place, often on roads or other public places, for Eid in Muslim countries.   (A few posts back, however, I noted how at least one big city - Cairo - was trying to stamp out the practice on public health and hygiene grounds.)

Having a look at the photos - which I don't really recommend - it reminds of me of my theory as to why public attitudes towards gruesome executions have changed so much in the West.   (Even allowing for some people wanting to shock themselves by looking up real life beheadings and gruesome mangled bodies on the 'net, it's pretty much impossible to imagine anything other than public outrage in the West at the idea that public should want to watch any criminal beheaded, hung, or drawn and quartered, when such things did use to be a public spectacle in Christian countries.)

I think that that commonplace public butchery of animals is a possible reason why people used to be not shocked at seeing a "deserving" person butchered in public as well.  But when such animal butchery got hidden away from the market to the interior of a slaughterhouse, public sensitivity to seeing humans broken and cut increased over time too.

And you would have to say that it is Islamic nations (public beheading in Saudi Arabia) and Islamic terrorism that is the main source of such maltreatment of human bodies now. 

I know that you can argue that the public slaughter of animals is more "honest" about how those of us who enjoy meat get our food - many people say that a visit to a slaughterhouse is one of the best ways to be converted to vegetarianism - but being sensitised to the slaughter of animals by keeping it hidden has the added advantage of sensitising people to the slaughter of humans too.

And that is actually a good thing.

So yeah, I wish Muslim countries would stop the public slaughter of animals, for the sake of all of us.

PS:   a handy update on the matter of when and why Judaism stopped animal sacrifice.

PPS:   it is an interesting intellectual exercise to wonder what would happen to Islam if, in an equivalent to the Temple being destroyed in 70CE, its key sacred sites in and around Mecca were to be destroyed.  (Was it one of the three sites fake nuked in Mission Impossible 6?  I forget.)    I guess the immediate aftermath would depend on who caused the destruction.   An asteroid strike might raise particularly difficult questions as to how to interpret it!