PARIS, 11 February 2003 — French suppliers of lambs made available for the traditional Eid-Al-Adha feast are expected to have several thousand of the beasts remaining on their hands this year as the result of a boycott decreed by some French Muslims.
According to Azzedine Bouamama, who considers himself a moderate Muslim, “I just don’t see what they’re after, the so-called ‘integristes’, for, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no contradiction between the Eid rite, and the French government’s decision to ban the individual slaughter of the lambs.”
Bouamama was visiting a governmental warehouse — normally used by French National Railways to store freight — which is located at Pantin, in the northeast suburb of Paris, where already several thousand lambs have been placed, ready to be made available come this morning.
In fact, French law severely reprimands the individual slaughter of sheep for the Eid feast. And this for a number of reasons, above all concern to keep the slaughter of the animals sanitary.
What the French government does propose instead, in the words of Jean-Jacques Delatte, in charge of veterinary affairs for the Seine-Saint-Denis department, is “to slaughter the lambs ourselves, and do so under governmentally-dictated sanitary conditions, after the Eid prayers on Tuesday, then deliver them the following day.”
But, this falls on the second day of the Eid feast, and according to some Muslims this is not good enough, indeed has nothing to do with proper observance of the feast, which dictates that the moutons be made available the same day. Then too, they insist, “we should be able to slaughter them ourselves, otherwise the rite has no meaning really.”
That’s the feeling of Areski Saighi, a head of family from the Seine-Saint-Denis department, who said that, “I insist on slaughtering the lamb myself, that way I’m able to select the best animal possible, the one with the longest tail and whose eyes indicate that it is a healthy beast.”
Which is why he says that if he is unable to find a supplier of sheep who will allow him to select the animal he wants, then slaughter it himself, he will refuse to take part in the government-administered plan, which, said Delatte, does nevertheless attract a number of clients, albeit in insufficient numbers to make the scheme pay for itself.
And, predicts Delatte, as a result of this year’s boycott, which is expected to be more important than in the past, only 800 sheep will find takers this year, which means, he says, that suppliers should find themselves with between 10,000 and 20,000 unslaughtered lambs that nobody wants simply because many French Muslim families will find a way of obtaining their lambs clandestinely in the black market.
