I’m sure we’ve all heard by now about the Egyptian government’s move to slaughter all of the country’s stock of pigs, kept by the Coptic Christian minority, supposedly in response to the outbreak of “swine flu” originating in Mexico. I use the inverted commas because it ceased to be swine flu in reality some weeks ago; it’s flu, plain and simple, being passed from human to human. In this, the Israeli health minister who suggested it should be called Mexican flu is correct.
Unless someone can demonstrate that pigs are a recent import in Egypt, brought over by the British or Napoleon, it stands to reason that pigs have been farmed in Egypt since before Muslims were present, and Muslims have been in Egypt almost from the beginning of Islam. As is usual, they were allowed to keep pigs because not all of the Shari’ah applies to non-Muslims in an Islamic state. This would mean that pigs were present in Egypt for hundreds of years under the Khilaafa, including the Rightly Guided Caliphs, (رضي الله عنهم). No doubt there have been outbreaks of flu in that time which originated with them, and with the Muslims’ chickens for that matter. I don’t suppose the Caliphs slaughtered thousands of pigs or chickens in, say, Iraq or Morocco to hold back the epidemic once it had already started, by passing to human beings!
This is grandstanding, very obviously — Mubarak, a notoriously corrupt quasi-dictator, trying to look pious by doing something which generations of rulers who, righteous or not, ruled by the Shari’ah, did not do, rather like the Taliban who destroyed the Buddhas just as a show to the West and to their partisans, something that generations of better rulers than themselves never did. Muslims should not applaud him in this; it is a publicity stunt with no conceivable benefits to public health as any outbreak of the Mexican flu will be blown on the wind or brought by travellers from Europe or the USA, not from Egyptian pigs. In fact, if Egypt’s pigs are less intensively farmed than those in Mexico — kept in huge factory “farms” in which thousands of pigs are kept in the dark and walking in their own shit — then those pigs are far less likely to cause an outbreak of flu than those in Europe or North America.
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Hang on, so we don’t call it swine flu because it transmits from human to human, yet it’s ok to call it Mexican flu even though it can transmit without Mexicans present?
It has it’s origin with pigs - it’s swine flu. It follows the naming convention and that’s what everyone calls it anyway - the attempt to rename it only seems to serve the interests of the horrific business practices of the pork industry you mention by giving them some distance.
It stopped being swine flu when it infected a person and mutated. Swine flu is not new; this version of it is, which is why people get infected out of season and it spreads rapidly, as they don’t have immunity. Mexican flu is more appropriate, because that’s where it originated as a human disease; swine flu is misleading, because after it appeared after that first infection in Mexico, it ceased to have anything to do with pigs in terms of who it infects.
The Egyptian government should compensate the Christian Copts for slaughtering the pigs. Islamicaly Muslims are not allowed to destroy the livestock of others, even if it is ‘haram’ to Muslims and if done so, should compensate for it. (According to Shaykh Qaradawi).
I think the despotic government of Egypt has done a very stupid and un-Islamic thing. Without checking or testing the pigs, the slaughter further makes the long-standing respectful co-existence in Egypt between Christians and Muslims a more unstable one.
Muslims should not be applauding the Egyptian government, which has committed an injustice against a minority group, which lives under its security.
Why not call it “Feedlot Flu”? That tips a nod to the way in which industrial farming continues to contribute the development of these viruses.
This doesn’t happen too often but I have to disagree with you here, Brother. Calling it the Mexican flu IS VERY offensive to Mexicans. Why can’t people just call it H1N1 and get on with it?
Humans and their labels….jeesh.
As to the slaughter of pigs in Egypt, I had to laugh. I’m sure the Muslims were waiting for any excuse to get rid of those pigs. Perfect timing.
How do you think industrial farming should be changed so as curb the development of such viruses? Abandoning industrial farming altogether is not an option unless you wish for billions to starve in order to reduce world population to a level which pre-industrial farming can support…
It is industrial animal farming that may have caused this outbreak, not plant farming, ‘though that may lead to disaster too because of the use of similar techniques. We could feed many more people more effectively by not encouraging the consumption of enormous amounts of meat produced by potentially lethal- to humans that is; after all, all farming is lethal to the animals involved- methods that such industrial farming causes. That’s apart from the treatment of animals in such farms. We do need to reduce world population to a level which pre-industrial farming can support, or at least a much lower level than it now is at. Unless we use drastic agreed measures it will come about by mass starvation, mass killing and pandemics anyway.