The Ethical Treatment of Animals

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

There are a number of philosophical themes-for instance, divine attributes, theories of intellect, or the eternity of the world-that leap to mind in connection with philosophy in the Islamic world. The ethical treatment of animals is not one of them. Indeed one might suppose that this is a distinctively contemporary topic, that we have only recently started to include the welfare of non-human animals within the scope of our moral, and philosophical, concern. In this chapter, though, I hope to show that Muslim philosophers of the classical era had interesting things to say about how we should treat animals. (For simplicity I use the word “animals” throughout to refer to non-human animals.) In fact, antique philosophers had already explored the issue at length (Sorabji 1993; Osborne 2007). Epicureans and Stoics had given arguments to show why it is not unjust to kill and eat animals, arguments that were rebutted by Porphyry. In On Abstinence from Animal Food (Clark 2000), Porphyry followed the early Imperial Platonist Plutarch in pointing to the fact that animals display a capacity for reasoning and language. This undercut Stoic arguments that justified the killing of animals on the grounds of their irrationality. On the other hand, the relevant works of Porphyry and Plutarch were not translatedinto Arabic (on Porphyry in Arabic see Adamson 2007). Positive attitudes towards animal welfare in Arabic philosophical literature were not, it would seem, derived from the ancient philosophical tradition. Somewhat more important, as we will see, was the ancient medical tradition. But the really crucial impetus came from the Qur aʾ-n and the teachings of the Prophet collected as h.adi-th (Benkheira 2005; Foltz 2006). For instance, we find in the Qur aʾ-n, “no creature is there crawling on the earth, no bird flying with its wings, but they are nations like unto yourselves. We have neglected nothing in the Book; then to their Lord they shall be mustered” (Qur aʾ-n 6:38). This suggests both that God exercises providence over animals and that He will give them some kind of dispensation in the hereafter, an idea developed by Mu tʿazilite theologians (Heemskerk 2000). The h.adi-th meanwhile record that Muh. ammad showed benevolence to animals, for instance by chastizing his wife ‘A- ’ i-sha for overburdeninga camel, criticizing blood sports, and even saying that charity towards animals as well as humans will be rewarded by God (Foltz 2006: 19-20). A further spur to reflection on the status of animals was the literary tradition. Philosophers drew on animal fables like Kalila and Dimna, an Indian work translated into Arabic in the second/eighth century. An outstanding early example of the theme in Arabic literature is the enormousBook of Animals by al-Ja-h. iz., the greatest practicioner of Arabic belles-lettres (adab) in the third/ninth century, at the high-water mark of the ʿAbba-sid caliphate. Al-Ja-h. iz. already serves to unify the strands of thinking about animals just identified: he was not only a refined author, but also steeped in Mu tʿazilite kala-m and reasonably well informed about Hellenic philosophical ideas. Here though we will be looking at three more philosophical discussions of animals. First we will discuss the doctor and controversialist Abu-Bakr al-Ra-zi-(d. 313/925). He argues explicitly that we have an ethical obligation to treat animals well. Next we will turn our attention to Ikhwa-n al-S. afa-ʾ (“the Brethren of Purity”) and their most famous epistle, in which they imagine a debate between humankind and the animals, regarding the question of whether animals should continue to be enslaved and oppressed by humans. Finally, we will look at H. ayy ibn Yaqz.a-n by Ibn T. ufayl (d. 581/1185-1186), which features a self-taught philosopher who adopts a remarkably animal-friendly lifestyle. These three texts will reveal that attitudes towards the treatment of animals wereintimately related with conceptions of divine providence. In this the Islamic sources differ from not only the modern debate, but also the ancient tradition. In antiquity, the key question was whether or not animals share rationality with humans. The Stoics said that because animals are irrational they have no moral standing, being insufficiently akin (oikeion) to humans. Among our three authors, by contrast, it is al-Ra-zi-and Ibn T. ufayl who recommend treating animals well, despite believing that animals are inferior to humans. Their humane attitude is not based on any kinship or parity between animalkind and humankind. The Ikhwa-n, meanwhile, do explore the possibility that animals are equal to (or even superior to) humans. Yet they ultimately reach a less animal-friendly conclusion than al-Ra-zi-and Ibn T. ufayl. As we will see, however, they likewise consider divine providence pivotal in discerning the appropriate way to treat animals.