Yulin Festival 2015, Maybe It's Ok Not To Stop It

One of the current issue that has hit top headlines has been the Yulin Dog Eating Festival. It was good to see many people from different background joining hands together trying to stop this event. A growing number of support can be seen when a petition to stop this festival was put up. You can view and sign this petition if you feel this should be stop in the link below

Petition To Stop Yulin Dog Eating Festival

When I first came to know about this festival, I was filled with rage because I never knew people could do something like this to dogs. Being an animal lover and a owner to a beautiful dog, my heart sank. But after a while, I thought the main reason why I wanted this festival to stop is because I own a dog and it's like family to me. There is such bond between me and dogs. If it was a different animal would I felt the same way as how I do now?

When my parents traveled to China last time, they told me that it's rare to see a dog running freely on the road like how we see in Malaysia. The reason was, the people would catch these dogs and cook them for a meal. So this means eating dogs is something common to them. It is part of their culture and by the looks of it, part of their diet too.

As I grew up, I learned that different countries has different culture which maybe as odd as it sounds like, but it is something they practice. For example, there are tribes who does believe in wearing things to cover up the boy. The whole tribe lives together without any sort of clothes to cover they genitals up. For them its normal but trying doing that in Malaysia, it will cause an uproar. Because the culture here cannot accept men and women walking around naked. In fact you even need to wear a sarong to cover up your shorts if you want to go to hospital

Same concept applies here with the Yulin Festival, perhaps for them its ok to eat dogs, but to me and the many more people its a big no because we see dogs as family and not food. But yet again, I realised those were against the Yulin festival were generally non-Muslims and not Muslims. Well maybe that's how it looked like on my Facebook and that surely doesn't paint the full picture

I do know of Muslims who are against this, but their voice are not as strong as the non-Muslims who I see are trying to stop this festival. The reason is again the connection we have with dogs. Most non-muslims sees this dogs as family while Muslims don't share such bonds with dogs as much as we do. Yet many passionate Muslim animal lovers has stood up to stop this event.

I want you to consider another situation and see if you would make such efforts to protest it. During Hari Raya Aidiladha, many cows are slaughtered and cook before giving out to people. Put the doing charity thing aside and religion aside and money. Just look it from the perspective of human killing animals under some reason. If you find Yulin Festival is wrong, than this is wrong too. If you find this ok, than maybe Yulin Festival isn't too wrong after all. But of cause in the context of religion and culture, slaughtering the cows are acceptable and not wrong. Its the same when Hindu's slaughter's goat under the name of religious prayers. I'm not trying to start a riot here, just trying to make you see things from a different perspective *I am still against Yulin despite all this*. Again this is not put one's religious believe down but just a comparison on what is acceptable and what is not in our culture.

One last thing, you don't necessary need to be a vegetarian to be against this event. That's the stupidest thing I have ever heard. It's like telling you need to be a politician to disagree with GST or be a cop if you are unhappy with the crime rates. I think if you are animal lover and want to end this cruelty, you should stand up and do your part. The least you can do is sign that petition on top.

My name is Sukesh Pandian and I am against Yulin Annual Dog Meat Eating Festival