Religions and the sacrifice of nonhuman animals , some links ( all accessed 21th Oct 2012 )
Animal slaughter in Islam is ritualistic … No human behavior is more hidden or misunderstood than offering sacrifice, both animal and human … Animal Sacrifice … in the 21st century! … Unethical Practice of ANIMAL SACRIFICE … Over 100 million animals are slaughtered annually during Eid ul-Adha across the Islamic world within a 48 hour period
Buddhism banned animal sacrifice in the regions where it predominantly occured. However on Buddha’s birthday animal sacrifices take place, an gruesome mass killing carried out by various Hindu sects … http://www.buddhisma2z.com/content.php?id=470 … http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-Animal-Sacrifice-on-Buddhas-Birthday/407150862641376 … http://www.stopanimalsacrifice.org
“China: Buddhism and Taoism generally prohibit killing of animals; some animal offerings, such as fowl, pigs, goats, fish, or other livestock, are accepted in some Taoism sects and beliefs in Chinese folk religion. In Kaohsiung, animal sacrifices are banned in Taoist temples” says Wikipedia, this however is not totally true, there is a Buddhist temple http://wikimapia.org/142877/Tzu-Chi-Temple where a horrific form of animal sacrifice take place, as I mentioned in this blog post about the murder of pigs in the Sanhsia Tzushi Temple.
The majority of pagans today in the Western societies are supposedly vegetarian or vegan
Vegan Pagans http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vegan-Pagans , http://veganpagans.tribe.net , http://diannesylvan.typepad.com , Animal Rights: My Pagan Value …
Overall I want to note: Most religions are incompatible with Animal Rights and Earth Rights, simply because they put a god or gods, a divine concept, on top of all existence in a hierarchical manner. Paganism and some religions stand inbetween, depending on the features of their god/gods. The best is to let your reason speak, and not any contractualist and homoncentrically driven collectivist selfishness.
To argue that our secular societies also kills nonhuman animals, on an industrial scale, does not take anything away from the moral blindness that religions display in regard to other than human life, individual life and justice based on ‘common sense’ reasoning; after all religions falsely claim they have something to do with “love” and “the creation”. Any society has to face the consequences of the factul atrocities it commits – be it in the name of progress or a religious belief held.
The incapacity of humans to relate to the world and the universe in a co-creative, mutually respectful and sensitive way, brings with it an undesired incapacity to deal with one another as humans in a peaceful way. You can’t have the one without the other, you can’t arbitrarily draw a line between all the factors that matter for a morally sound coexistence … . But try to convince people of that … the things that never seemed to matter morally so much, someone might think, how could these things matter now? Well, welcome to the 21 Century!