The Matador: A Cowardly Bully
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Ruth Eisenbud
February 2012

[Ed. Note: If you've never seen a "bullfight," please watch Bullfighting to see how cowards brutally abuse animals for sport, entertainment and religious rituals.]

There are some who would consider Juan Jose Padilla a hero... the bull fighter who lost an eye and can no longer chew his food after he was gored by Marques during the dance of sadism called a bull fight. Though maimed for life, Padilla intends to go into the ring again.

He is not a hero, but a coward who torments a normally peaceful animal into a frenzy, so that he may express his machismo or dominion over a bull. There were no victors in the match between Marques and the once proud matador. As is the custom, no matter who wins, the bull loses. The bull is always put to death in yet another example of the Biblical injunction for man to spread dread and fear over animal kind:

Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.
- Genesis

Animals never win with dominion.

The tragedy of the bull fight is not that this bullying matador was gored, but that he was in the ring in the first place. Surely there must be a better way to define one's manhood than tormenting and killing an innocent animal. Adding to the perversion of human dominance is the endorsement of such cruelty by the religious institutions of the semitic tradition. In this case the blood sports of Latin countries such as Spain includes 'fire bull,' where a fire is lit on the horns of a bull as he runs in terror follwed by men driven to ecstasy by the cruelty, or another primitive festival where drunk villagers chase a bull as they stab him, are often blessed by a religious leader of the Catholic Church, sometimes in the name of the holy virgin.

If this is religion, then we should have none of it. We must avoid all support of such backward and primitive religions that thrive on driving followers into a religious frenzy of ecstatic sadism. A true religion would not incite to violence and harm of an innocent creature, who under reasonable conditions, would harm no one.

It is the essential characteristic of a wise person that he/she does not kill any living being. One should know that non-killing and equality of all living beings are the main principles of religion.
- Jain sutra  

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