Letter from Jaleh About Animal Sacrifice - October 2, 2008
Letters From All-Creatures.org and The Mary T. and Frank L. Hoffman Family Foundation

Letter from Jaleh About Animal Sacrifice - October 2, 2008

My Dearest Frank and Mary,

Every afternoon around 7 p.m. I walk around where I live north of Tehran to feed the feral cats who are eagerly waiting for me. In a way I am tired and angry with others who do not care for these hungry creatures and in spite of being vegetarian I have to spend a lot of my salary and spend hours to cook for the cats and mostly I do not find any time to prepare something for myself. I print a lot of notes about being kind to other of God's creatures and put them inside apartment buildings encouraging people to put put extra food for these creatures... but WHO CARES? They just imitate the type of clothes, make-up, etc. from progressive countries, but from a moral point of view they are mostly ZERO.

Yesterday as usual I prepared my bag and went out for this duty (feeding the cats) but in one of the streets I suddenly encountered some people who were sacrificing a poor sheep for a new car which they purchased (usually when they buy a new house, car, when they get married and even when someone dies they sacrifice the animals, only god know what goes on in their mind). I started screaming and saying bad words to them and changed direction so I wouldn't have to see their cruelty. [To see these images, visit here...]

I should point out that they are not sacrificing for GOD. They do it for themselves and they believe that if they don't kill an animal for their new car and don't pour the blood on the car they will have a bad accident. They are extremely superstitious, even if they are from well-educated and from sophisticated families.

I attach some photos these are taken during some religious ceremonies and some are taken for military activities! I am very happy that you are publishing these photos in your site so that all the world will see what happens to God's poor creatures. [Visit Sheep Image Gallery and see images 17-21]

By the way, they are not killing feral cats since Islamic Prophet and Saints are insisting on Being Kind to Animals. But unfortunately they are killing all feral dogs since they say dogs according to Islam are impure and dirty.

I have some other younger friends who are thinking like me and doing their best to help the animals but let's say we are only 10% of the whole nation. By the way, I miss my Eskandar a lot, although I have three others at home but he was something else for me. I buried him in front of my apartment window and planted some flowers on his tomb. [Visit Eskandar's story]

God Bless You, Jaleh

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