God Made Me Muslim and Vegan – Interview with Duke McLeod (vegan), Part 2 of 3

“Taqwa is one of these core principles of Islam, and that is mentioned a lot in the Qur’an as well, in different forms. We can translate Taqwa as God consciousness. This is done by more modern Islamic scholars. And God consciousness is key in Islam. If we want to live our life according to the ethics and the principles, and also the laws.”

“So, in terms of veganism, that would mean that I want to avoid the cruelty that is condemned very, very clearly in the Qur’an and in the Hadith.” “When we look at the videos, we see from the animal agriculture from dairy, there’s nothing of these (Islamic ethics and principles) that could be said applies there. They are milked by robotic, by mechanics. They are suffering, they are caged. They have infected and infested udders from the brutality of these machines and from being overmilked and overused. And that is where the milk in the supermarket comes from. And that is why I say all of that milk and all the dairy products are not Halal, they are Haram.”

“Environmentalism is really important for vegans and for Muslims. We have so much evidence too, in the scriptures of the Qur’an, and then Hadith that environmentalism is important, and caring for the world, not exploiting the world. In that holy book, Adam was about to be appointed as ‘Khalifa of the world.’ So, God wants to appoint this human as a steward of this world, as a caretaker, as a guardian.” “There’s also a saying of the Prophet Muhammad, where He calls Earth our mother, and that we’re meant to look after. And so, the idealism of environmentalism is very much present in Islamic thought. We can remind people we are not meant to be tyrants and destroy this Earth if we are in some kind of entitled position as guardian. We’re meant to look after this place and leave it a better place than we found it in. And if we destroy this place, we will have no place for ourselves to live.”

Islam is filled with loving examples of kindness and compassion towards all beings. Mr. McLeod now shares with us some holy stories of loving Islamic Saints who taught us not to eat animal-people.