Author: Molly Moore, Washington
Post Service
Publication: The International
Herald Tribune
Date: March 6, 2001
Slashing Sheep in Celebration Collides
With Realities of Modern City Life
Istanbul - Across this city on Monday
- in back yards, alongside streets, at parks and even on apartment balconies
- the throats of thousands of sheep were slashed in celebration of the
start of the annual Muslim Feast of Sacrifice.
The holiday, known as Eid al Adha,
is a festival of sacrifice and regeneration that marks the Prophet Mohammed's
persecution and flight from Mecca to Medina. It also commemorates Abraham's
sacrifice of the ram as a substitute for his son. But this holiday season,
centuries-old tradition has slammed into the modern era of city life, globalized
rules of conduct and changing social values in one of the world's most
rapidly urbanizing countries.
The annual slaughter has embroiled
health authorities, animal rights activists, politicians eager to join
the European Union and religious leaders in a debate that intersects many
of Turkey's most contentious social struggles. It also has ignited arguments
that even the most devoted followers of Islam are finding difficult to
contest.
"The situation today is totally
absurd," said Abdurrahman Dilipak, who writes extensively on religious
issues. "The whole sacrifice has degenerated. It's like a butcher's festival.
People are taking sheep to the ninth floor and cutting them in the bathroom.
It smells, there are flies all over the place, there's blood going into
the water system and street dogs are grabbing the bones."
City officials have tried to reconcile
traditional religious values nurtured in Turkey's agrarian past with the
realities of cramped urban living by establishing 169 official municipal
sacrifice centers throughout this metropolis of 12 million people for the
three days of slaughter that continues through Wednesday.
Even Turkey's director of religious
affairs, Mehmet Nuri Yilmaz, issued a statement over the weekend urging
city residents to make use of the government-provided facilities: "Animals
slaughtered on the streets may cause various diseases and their blood could
create images of aggression and violence that does not exist in Islam."
The municipal centers also offer
one-stop shopping: residents can purchase a live sheep or cow from a farmer,
have it reserved for the slaughter, then return for the butchering.
At one of the largest centers, where
hundreds of makeshift tents have been erected overlooking the Bosporous,
entire families turned out for the search for the perfect sacrificial sheep
or cow Sunday afternoon, as much of an annual rite as an American family's
outing to select the perfect Christmas tree.
The city of Istanbul's official
Web site lists the following attributes as criteria for a good sacrifice:
The animal should have no physical disability, its horns, ears and tail
should be intact, along with a full mouth of teeth, and it should not be
sneezing, coughing or depressed or tired looking.
Banners throughout the livestock
corrals declared: "Turkey's champion butchers are here! Hurry to make your
appointment for cutting and chopping!" The champion carvers walked about
the stalls, blocks of knives and grappling hooks clanging from their belts.
One city resident, preferring to
slaughter his purchase himself, stuffed a feisty ram with beautifully-curved
horns into the trunk of his white Nissan and slammed the lid, twice querying
the seller: "You're sure he'll be O.K.? He won't suffocate in there?"
Animal rights activists, treading
carefully, have tried to advance their message in a slowly changing society
where 2.5 million sheep, cows and goats were sacrificed during the holiday
last year. "We cannot openly say don't kill," said Dirgul Rona, head of
the Turkish Human Society. "That would be defying religious practices and
tradition."
Muzaffer Karaoglu, who grew up around
animals in a rural village, came up with a cyber-solution, offering Turkey's
first online sheep sale and butchering service. Mr. Karaoglu who said he
has made about 100 sales, sees his service as an example of how the "basic
roots will stay the same but methods and approaches will change."
And the dean of theology at Istanbul's
Marmara University, Zekeriya Beyaz, suggested that it is time for Islam
to remold itself to a more modern society. "Some meat to eat is not the
most urgent need of the people any more," he said. "Maybe helping someone
to find a job or providing a scholarship to a student would also work."
Tradition is not easily discarded, however, in a country in which 98 percent
of the population is Muslim and in a city with a large population of rural
immigrants. To many Muslims, the annual sacrifice of an animal, most commonly
a sheep or cow, is one of Islam's principle tenants, representing devotion
to God and a sharing of wealth. After the sacrifice, families divide the
meat into thirds with equal portions for their family, neighbors and needy
members of the community.
And so it was that several families
gathered on Monday morning in their small common dirt yard in a neighborhood
on the edge of Istinye - one of the city's most prosperous districts -
to conduct the ritual.
A community elder wielded a knife.
A massive black and white bull was led into the hard-packed yard. Sixteen
men pulled his feet from under him and left him heaving on his side.
"Wrong direction!" shouted the elder.
The head must face toward the holy city of Mecca. Men and bull struggled.
The men bent over the bull in a moment of prayer. The elder raised the
knife. A child buried his face in his hands. A teenage girl covered her
eyes and peeped through her fingers. "I can't look," said Ismet Karmil,
49. "Too much blood - gets to me."
Fear of Disease Impedes Ritual
Muslims in many parts of Europe
were thwarted in their bid to celebrate the festival of Eid al Adha as
the slaughter of tens of thousands of animals because of fear of foot-and-mouth
disease has left a shortage of sheep, Agence France-Presse reported from
Paris.
In France, which is home to Europe's
largest Muslim population, estimated at around four million, the government
has not thought it necessary to implement a full ban on the slaughter of
sheep, but has simply "invited" Muslims to forego the ritual.
In Britain, religious leaders have
urged the country's two million Muslims to find other ways to celebrate,
such as donating money to provide meat for needy Muslims in other countries.
