I warn you against shedding blood, indulging in it and making a habit of it, for blood never sleeps.
Becoming a vegetarian is not merely a symbolic gesture. Nor is it an attempt to isolate oneself from the ugly realities of the world, to keep oneself pure and so without responsibility for the cruelty and carnage all around. Becoming a vegetarian is a highly practical and effective step one can take toward ending both the killing of nonhuman animals and the infliction of suffering on them.
It seems that humanity is incapable of putting a halt to the shedding of innocent blood.
The tendency to cruelty
should be watched in
children and if they
incline to any such
cruelty, they should be
taught the contrary
usage. For the custom
of tormenting and killing
other animals will, by
degrees, harden their
hearts even toward man.
Children should from
the beginning, be
brought up in an
abhorrence of killing or
tormenting living
beings.
The habit of shedding blood, or even of seeing it shed, corrupts all sentiment of humanity.
It is strange to hear people talk of Humanitarianism, who are members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to children and animals, and who claim to be God-loving men and women, but who, nevertheless, encourage by their patronage the killing of animals merely to gratify the cravings of appetite.
When the governing representatives of the people legalize the shedding of innocent blood (as a for-profit business, nonetheless) then they have placed themselves, and those they represent, in the direct line of God's judgment.
The Koran says the killing of an innocent, the taking of an innocent life, is tantamount to killing all of mankind.
The truth is that killing innocent people is always wrong - and no argument or excuse, no matter how deeply believed, can ever make it right. No religion on earth condones the killing of innocent people; no faith tradition tolerates the random killing of our brothers and sisters on this earth.
You know, we all oppose animal cruelty. But sometimes we forget that animals on farms suffer and feel pain like all other animals. They, too, deserve to be protected from harm and cruelty.
When John Murtha, for example, said the Marines are killing innocent civilians in cold blood.
We have seen that blood united to blood in the case of but remotely connected species of animals, kills; blood united to blood in the case of more closely allied species of animals does not kill. The physical organism of man survives when strange blood comes in contact with strange blood, ... but clairvoyant power perishes under the influence of this mixing of blood, or exogamy.
Each year, billions of animals are subjected to cruelty on factory farms, feed lots, and slaughterhouses. The brutality that these animals endure would be grounds for felony cruelty charges if inflicted upon our cats and dogs.
This is where our obsession with going fast and saving time leads. To road rage, air rage, shopping rage, relationship rage, office rage, vacation rage, gym rage. Thanks to speed, we live in the age of rage.
We regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood…We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs.
In these surreal days, there is one truth. Nothing justified the killing of innocent people in America last week and nothing justifies the killing of innocent people anywhere else.