Repost: Mealtime = 15-minute Hell

I was again bothered by question of being a muslim vegetarian. When I looked at my notes, I found this on my back up data. I wrote it when I have not decided yet to stop eating meat. Uploaded on my facebook on Thursday, July 2, 2009 at 7:29pm


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I always believe nature talks to me in her own way. It can be trough people, experience, or any signs from the nature herself. Now I think she's forcing me to stop my ignorance of animal's exploitation. Well, it's hyperbole yet I believe later these signs will lead me to the issue (or they already have? ).

One day, a fellow who is a vegetarian talked to me about membership of WWF -it’s not those matches where boys in panties fighting each other!!! Although after being sued they changed it to WWE-. It is an international non-governmental organization working on issues regarding the conservation, research and restoration of the environment (cited from Wikipedia, our God of Knowledege ;))

He complained about its activists who still eat meat. For me it’s not even a problem since we do not eat rare and endangered animals. Still this fella had his own arguments. “What will happen if everyone stops eating meat? How about the possibility of overpopulation of animals?”, I asked. He believes the increase of density of animals (in this case farm animals) is caused by cattle cultivation. If people start reducing their consumption of made-of-animal products (meat, leather, gelatin, brushes etc.) then cattle cultivation will reduce and the wild life (except human beings) takes care of animal population.

About a week before the talk I visited Dee’s site (one of my fav writers), she become a vegetarian and had a campaign related to eviromental issues. Then at the night I raved about being a vegetarian to a ‘friend’ and he thought I was joking and asked if I wanted to be a bhiksuni. Although after attending yoga class I’ve eaten lesser red meat, I wasn’t sure if I could stop eating meat.

I’m quite familiar with kejawen (it’s a Javanesse perspective of life which believes that nature has an ultimate value), so for me it’s too “human-centric” if we say that animals are there only to support human beings life. To be eaten. To be killed.

I’m still confused by the question of the meaning of (my) life then another appealing yet hard-to-be-answered question comes to mind: what is the meaning of animals’ existence?

So, mealtime for me is the moment of my ignorance toward this.