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- Denis Giles
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Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
When Britain’s largest bakery, Greggs brought, a vegan sausage roll into the market, it was attacked by a senior reporter as “Stalinist”, and the idea of having a vegan roll as “nauseating”. In India we never have this problem, because almost everyone at the top of society/media/government/sport/films is vegetarian. But all over the world hundreds of vegans/vegetarian can tell you horror stories about the reactions of “conservatives”. One study found that more than half of vegetarians had experienced discrimination, and nearly 10% of vegetarians said that family had severed contact with them because they didn’t eat meat. About the same percentage say they were not hired for jobs because of their diet.
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- Denis Giles
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Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
It's not just what you eat that is killing the earth and all its inhabitants. It is also what you wear.
Every time you buy an article of clothing you make a choice between the biosphere and the lithosphere. The biosphere is an agricultural field where cotton, linen (made from flax), hemp – even silk (mulberry trees) – are grown. Wool, though cruel in another way, is also grown. The lithosphere is the protective crust of the earth. Fossil fuels are extracted from this and turned into synthetic fabrics like polyester.
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- Denis Giles
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Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
The day that the COVID testing team (I have no idea where they came from. There are so many astronaut like creatures floating about from so many different departments, governments, hospitals, testing centres, that I stopped wondering a long time ago and now just meekly submit to sticks being poked into my nose and throat, and blood taken) declared I had the virus, my thoughts went immediately to death. So many people I know have died. Two died when I was on the phone trying to get oxygen for them. Another was admitted by me into hospital after begging the owner. Every morning a person I know turns into a memory.
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- Denis Giles
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Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
Around the world Muslims mark the Festival of Sacrifice on the 10th day of the holy month of Dhu-al-Hijjah. It honours Abraham’s willingness to slay his son Ishmael at Allah’s bidding. The killing did not happen. Apparently the angel Gabriel appeared and declared that God was so moved by Abraham’s devotion that now he could kill a goat instead.
Such a frightening story. First, it has been lifted wholesale from the Christians. The story is known as the Akedah in Judaism and originates in the Tora, the first book of Moses (Genisis, Ch. 22) and Ishmael is originally Isaac.
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- Denis Giles
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Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
Islam is not a primitive culture and spirituality. It is the culture of Islam that has led to many of the advancements in human knowledge, that are now synonymous with civilization itself. In India it is the Muslims that have kept the arts and crafts alive, and the language, Urdu, is the most gentle, mellifluous, cultured means of communication.
But at the end of the day it is Eid, and the barbarism of that day, that mould popular opinion that Islam is a culture/religion of violence, a people who define themselves by the eating of other beings, impossible to communicate with, illiterate and permanently angry.
Read more: Time to Stand up for the Universal Standards of Justice and Compassion