It's the day before the Idul Adha (as the Indonesians call the Muslim Day of Sacrifice) festival, and I'm walking the streets of Yogyakarta, and here are these rather reluctant looking cattle being coaxed off the back of a truck.
It's right outside a mosque, there are crowds of festive people in the grounds, and the imam's in full flow on the speaker system.
At this point I need to issue a
VIOLENT CONTENT WARNING!
If you don't want to see images of animals being ritually slaughtered, don't scroll down any further.
I was curious to see it all though. I eat meat after all. Animals have to be killed for that. If you can't watch it, maybe you shouldn't eat it. And if they're still alive and conscious while being bled to death, halal style, is that really much more cruel than whatever goes on in an industrial scale Australian abattoir?
What struck me most of all was what a friendly, festive atmosphere there was. It was quite a community event. There were specialist slaughterers (who stroked and comforted the animals even as they worked on them). There were butchers, smallgoods specialists, labellers and documenters. There were refreshments distributors, photographers, and mosque officials. And there were lots of welcoming people, anxious to explain it all to me and make me feel at home.
I was told about the origins of the festival - it's to celebrate Abraham being tested by God when he asked him to sacrifice his only son. It was explained to me why it had to be 23 beasts that were to be sacrificed (the number of prayers made over the 5 day period, I think it was). I was posed for photos with people, and I posed some of them for photos. At morning tea time I was even given one of the prepacked morning refreshment kits provided for the volunteer workers.
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