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Animal Welfare Promotion in Islamic Approach
Submitted by ProFauna Admin on Fri, 04/08/2011 - 11:00
Animal welfare is a relatively new issue in Indonesia. There are still many cases of violence or cruelty to animals, including the illegal wildlife trade which causes suffering to animals due to bad handling and transportation, or inappropriate feeding. ProFauna believes that public awareness is very important to overcome those problems as the organisation has been developing a method to educate the public about animal welfare in Islamic approach because more than 200 millions Indonesian inhabitants are Moslem.
Last December 2010, ProFauna launched the first publication of the book entitled "Islam Cares for Animals" in Indonesian language and distributed free copies to Islamic boarding schools, regular schools, NGOs, government offices, journalists, and some Islamic communities in the nation. The readers gave positive reviews about the book and ProFauna received many requests from other communities to send them the copies. Thanks to the World Animal Net, ProFauna will launch the second publication of the book and spread the animal welfare messages to more Islamic followers in Indonesia.
Apart from the book distribution, ProFauna has visited many Islamic boarding schools led by renowned and respectable Islamic leaders (locally called Kyai) to promote animal welfare. One of the leaders was Kyai Azizi Chasbullah who stated during ProFauna's visit, "Islam is a religion that cares for animals and forbids the followers to harm animals. I support ProFauna's programme to promote compassion to animals to Islam followers.".
ProFauna's religious approach to promote animal welfare and protection is hoped to be as effective as what ProFauna did for the sea turtle conservation campaign in Bali in the year 2000. ProFauna succeeded in campaigning the protection of the endangered sea turtle by inviting Hindu Priests to promote to Balinese people to protect the marine animal. Bali which was previously notorious as the hub of sea turtle slaughter has now been haven for the animal to nest and lay their eggs. ProFauna believes that the similar approach will be successful to promote animal welfare and protection in Islamic ways.