Happy Easter, Ramadan and Passover!

Happy Easter, Ramadan and Passover to all of you, kittens! I hope you are enjoying a lovely day, doing what makes you happier and if not, I hope you’ll be able to do that as soon as possible – I know you deserve it!

I also hope you are having some nice vegan food and are avoiding putting dead, innocent animals on your plates for these holidays.

A Special Year

This year is a particular one as the three Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) are all celebrating and observing main holidays in the same 2-week period with Ramadan started on the 22nd March, Passover started on the 5th April and Easter on the 9th April. The amazing fact is that these religions have many common points, from worshipping one God to having sacrifice and hope and love as their main teachings. Also, people following these religions have been (or are still being) persecuted in different parts of the world.

The holidays are always a way to celebrate life and that’s what these three religions do teach in their own way: for Christians it’s the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection after being dead for three days, for Muslims it’s celebrating the end of the fasting period with three days of prayers and special food, and for the Jewish is the celebration of the end of the enslavement of the Hebrew people.

And all this seems so hopeful and beautiful! However, the preferred way to celebrate rebirth, end of fasting and the end of enslavement is to…kill. And who to kill? The most innocent lives on this Earth, the true symbol of innocence – lambs.

Is this the real way to celebrate? It is baffling how millions of people can all think that yes, this is the way to do it.

Need For Change

Following, are three reasons why these religions should leave animals out of their rituals:

So we have that in these religions, people are taught that lambs are a symbol of innocence and purity and that makes sense to kill them and eat them as a way to celebrate God. If you are killing the symbol of innocence, even symbolically, aren’t you like killing that virtue?
If the killing of animals is in the Sacred Books, this probably was meant to be as a means to provide food for the people. In 2023, this cannot be the case anymore: we produce so much food and even more food is grown to feed the animals that are then going to be killed. There is no reason to keep killing animals.
Killing animals is cruel and it’s even more cruel if it is done for religious reasons. Christianity, Islam and Judaism all have huge followings, all over the world and the leaders of said religions should give a much better example of compassion to all animals, humans and non-humans.

And a very wise man once said

If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.
Mahatma Gandhi, 1913

Recipes For A More Compassionate Easter, Ramadan and Passover

A couple of years ago, I shared “The All-Vegan Easter Menu” with ideas for starters, main courses, soups and desserts.

During Ramadan and for Eid, there are many vegan halal recipes: the VeganMuslimInitiative website gives some ideas for soups, but also the Cauliflower with Mushroom dish is an easy and tasty one. Also the Malfouf (Lebanese Cabbage Rolls) recipe by PlantBasedFolk