Teachings of major religions :

Opportunity for vegetarianism

D.P. Atukorale

In addition to Hinduism and Buddhism other major religious traditions are sometimes associated with vegetarianism including Jainism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Of these Hinduism has the most profound connection with a vegetarian way of life and the strongest claim to fostering and supporting it.

Hinduism, the most ancient of all the world religions carries a number of injunctions against meat eating and some of the texts as far as I am aware oppose violence against other life forms which are held to be equally sacred; others link caring for animals with one's journey towards spiritual purity. One group says that the Karmic consequences of meat eating are drastic and it is said that the meat eaters will be eaten by the same kinds of animals one has killed in the present life, and most of the texts on Hinduism never endorse the wholesale slaughter of animals so prevalent today.

According to the Vedic tradition, all creatures manifest the same life - force and merit equal care and compassion. The soul that is present in animal form is of no lesser significance than that which is embodied in human form. The Ramayana and Mahabharata (which includes Bhagavad Gita) also advocate a vegetarian diet on religious grounds. The Bhagavad Gita specifies the vegetarian foods (fruits, vegetables, grams, nuts and diary products) be offered as devotional offerings and that those who consume such items, having first offered to God are especially blessed.

Hinduism is thus demonstrably positive toward vegetarianism. Furthermore, it has contributed immeasurably towards animals and toward humans and hence the non-violence as the ideal way of life. Thus as far as I am aware people belonging to the Hare Krishna movement are vegetarians.

Judaism and Christianity have a common scriptural source which provides the same challenge to their vegetarian adherents. All the people belonging to the Seventh Day Adventist group of Christians are vegetarians and teetotallers and there are millions of these followers in USA.Like Judaism and Christianity Islam is not a religion, most people in the world identify with vegetarianism even though some scholars and adherents contend, that, its founding prophets Mohammad (c 570-632) conveyed a vegetarian message both by word and deed. Many of his sayings and actions are concerned with a need to show love, kindness, compassion and mercy to animals. The Koran, the book of revelation of which Mohammad is the messenger also contains suggestive hints of the following kinds. "All the beasts that roam the earth and all the birds that soar on high are but communities like your own.

We have left out nothing in the book. Before the Lord they shall be gathered all" (Surah 638). "He laid the earth for His creatures with all its fruits and blossom - bearing palm, chaff - covered gram, and scented herbs" (Surah 55.9-11). In Islam our species is not granted absolute dominion, over the earth, since the earth does not belong to us, humans are but natures caretakers, the vice-regents of Allah for whose glory all acts are performed.

This taken together with the prescription always to act out for justice, kindness and charity (Surah 16,90) seems all for a caring, protective stance towards animals.

According to Rosen, there is evident accounts of his life that Mohammad himself preferred a vegetarian life, but unable to require it of his earlier followers because he was mindful that such strictures would likely alternate them.

He thus favoured the techniques of gradualism meaning that he aimed via craving and personal example rather than prescription, to move people in the right direction. Rosen also notes that there is a robust and compassionate vegetarian standpoint emanating from the Sufi (or Islamic mystical) tradition and that (as in Judiasm) strictest dietary laws are solely concerned with slaughter of animals and forbidden and permissible forms of meat eating (Rosen, Diet for Transcendence p.60).

There is then, an opportunity for vegetarianism to take hold within Islam too.