Africa and her animals
Philosophical and Practical Perspectives
Edited by Rainer Ebert & Anteneh Roba, and published by the University of South Africa (UNISA) Press
With a foreword by J. M. Coetzee,
the 2003 Nobel Laureate in Literature
ISBN 978-1-86888-900-6
xxi + 358 pages
On October 14, the Dhaka Tribune published an open letter, in which my co-authors and I, along with dozens of signatories, urge Muslims in Bangladesh to reconsider the practice of animal sacrifice on Eid al-Adha [1]. Six days later, the same newspaper published a response to our open letter by Muhammad Shafiullah (subsequently referred to as “the author”) who is pursuing his Ph.D. in Economics at Griffith University in Australia [2]. As both publications received a lot of attention in Bangladesh, particularly on social media, and raise fundamentally important questions about the relationship between humans and other animals, I decided to write this rebuttal. What follows are my personal thoughts which do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of those who signed or co-authored the original open letter. Continue reading “The exploitation of animals: bad for us, bad for the environment, and bad for animals”
Rainer Ebert 