By Peer Muhammad Amir Qureshi
Cruelty to animals, also called animal abuse, animal neglect or animal cruelty, is the infliction by omission (neglect) or by commission by humans of suffering or harm upon any non-human animal. More narrowly, it can be the causing of harm or suffering for specific achievement, such as killing animals for entertainment; cruelty to animals sometimes encompasses inflicting harm or suffering as an end in itself, defined as zoosadism. Zoosadism is pleasure derived from cruelty to animals. Cruelty to animals occurs isn’t a new thing it has been evolved since from old ages. Cruelty to animals has different phases from malnutrition, Beating, Transportation ,Research and Slaughter as well.One Hadith quotes Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as saying:
“A good deed done to an animal is as meritorious as a good deed done to a human being, while an act of cruelty to an animal is as bad as an act of cruelty to a human being.”Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was especially vocal in his disapproval of the cruel practices of notching and slitting of ears of animals and the practice of putting painful rings around the necks of camels. (Hadith: Bukhari)
Although good has created animals to benefit humans but the humans have always added up to the sufferings and miseries to the animals by one way or the other. Even though some of the crulties are Organized cruelty which include
Dogfighting, cockfighting and other forms of organized animal cruelty go hand in hand with other crimes, and continues in many areas of the United States due to public corruption.
Taking sufferings out of science: Each year, more than 100 million animals—including mice, rats, frogs, dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, monkeys, fish, and birds—are killed in U.S. laboratories for biology lessons, medical training, curiosity-driven experimentation, and chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics testing. Before their deaths, some are forced to inhale toxic fumes, others are immobilized in restraint devices for hours, some have holes drilled into their skulls, and others have their skin burned off or their spinal cords crushed. In addition to the torment of the actual experiments, animals in laboratories are deprived of everything that is natural and important to them—they are confined to barren cages, socially isolated, and psychologically traumatized. The thinking, feeling animals who are used in experiments are treated like nothing more than disposable laboratory equipments.
ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS ARE WASTEFUL AND UNRELIABLE
A Pew Research Center poll found that 52 percent of U.S. adults oppose the use of animals in scientific research, and other surveys suggest that the shrinking group that does accept animal experimentation does so only because it believes it to be necessary for medical progress. The majority of animal experiments do not contribute to improving human health, and the value of the role that animal experimentation plays in most medical advances is questionable. In an article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that medical treatments developed in animals rarely translated to humans and warned that “patients and physicians should remain cautious about extrapolating the finding of prominent animal research to the care of human disease … poor replication of even high-quality animal studies should be expected by those who conduct clinical research.”
Diseases that are artificially induced in animals in a laboratory, whether they be mice or monkeys, are never identical to those that occur naturally in human beings. And because animal species differ from one another biologically in many significant ways, it becomes even more unlikely that animal experiments will yield results that will be correctly interpreted and applied to the human condition in a meaningful way. For example, according to former National Cancer Institute Director Dr. Richard Klausner, “We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn’t work in humans.”8 This conclusion was echoed by former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni, who acknowledged that experimenting on animals has been a boondoggle. “We have moved away from studying human disease in humans,” he said. “We all drank the Kool-Aid on that one, me included. … The problem is that it hasn’t worked, and it’s time we stopped dancing around the problem. … We need to refocus and adapt new methodologies for use in humans to understand disease biology in humans.”
The data is sobering: Although at least 85 HIV/AIDS vaccines have been successful in nonhuman primate studies, as of 2015, every one has failed to protect humans.10 In one case, an AIDS vaccine that was shown to be effective in monkeys failed in human clinical trials because it did not prevent people from developing AIDS, and some believe that it made them more susceptible to the disease. According to a report in the British newspaper The Independent, one conclusion from the failed study was that “testing HIV vaccines on monkeys before they are used on humans, does not in fact work.”
These are not anomalies. The National Institutes of Health has stated, “Therapeutic development is a costly, complex and time-consuming process. The average length of time from target discovery to approval of a new drug is about 14 years. The failure rate during this process exceeds 95 percent, and the cost per successful drug can be $1 billion or more.”
Research published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine revealed that universities commonly exaggerate findings from animal experiments conducted in their laboratories and “often promote research that has uncertain relevance to human health and do not provide key facts or acknowledge important limitations.”13 One study of media coverage of scientific meetings concluded that news stories often omit crucial information and that “the public may be misled about the validity and relevance of the science presented. “Because experimenters rarely publish results of failed animal studies, other scientists and the public do not have ready access to information on the ineffectiveness of animal experimentation.
ORGANIZED CRUELTY
Dogfighting, cockfighting and other forms of organized animal cruelty go hand in hand with other crimes, and continues in many areas of the United States due to public corruption.
In Kashmir in harsh winters you often have seen the horses scrounging in the snows as their owners run away them as those horses didn’t make money for them in winters and those horses spent months in the fields as in Kashmir in winters fields are covered with snow. People often ran away them by throwing stones on them as they are harming their crops,plants and trees as well. You also have been familiar with the transportation of animals on two wheelers, as animals dangle over due to selfish nature of humans as they don’t want to pay a rent to a vehicle to transport them. In Kashmir, if a hen of one house goes to the yard or kitchen garden of another neighbour, they break its legs. Don’t these people think that we have to stand before Almighty Allah
How to tackle the cruelty against animals
•Be a responsible pet owner. Know about and fulfil the needs of your pet. Don’t just concern yourself with basic needs – give your pet positive experiences that really enhance its well-being. Animal cruelty can be tackled by those methods. Be an example of kindness to other pets. Foster a pet that has suffered abandonment. Sadly, many pets are relinquished to shelters for various reasons. Foster homes help these animals to recover and prepare them to move onto a new permanent loving home. Intervene if you witness animal cruelty, abuse or neglect. Do what you can to stop someone from mistreating an animal. However, be sensible and don’t put yourself in danger. If necessary, seek help from other witnesses. Report animal cruelty, abuse or neglect. If you witness any form of animal cruelty, report it to the police or other authorities. Act immediately to prevent further cruelty. Teach your children to have respect for animals. Set a good example by being respectful towards animals. Show children how to treat animals with love and consideration. Help them to grow up to become the next generation of advocates for animals.
Demand stricter laws for the protection of animals. Stronger animal welfare laws and harsher penalties will lead to fewer cruelty cases.
Shelter an animal in need. You can be the helping hand that an animal need. An animal that has been mistreated needs support, sometimes immediately. You can make a real difference by taking an animal out of a harmful situation.
Consider that neglect of animals can be closely linked to domestic violence. Animal abuse and domestic abuse are often closely connected. By reporting your suspicions, you may also be helping both the animal in need and the family concerned. See also “The link between cruelty to animals and violence to humans”.
Educate people around you about the issue. Help people to understand that they can intervene in situations where animals are being neglected or even tormented. Animals have a right to live without fear or pain, and we have a responsibility to step in if their rights aren’t respected.
Offer help to people who are overwhelmed with their animal. Animals aren’t necessarily neglected out of a lack of love. An owner may not have the psychological resources to provide an animal with the appropriate care. Whatever the reasons may be, an affected pet must be removed from a place of neglect and given the care it needs to live and thrive. Any help you give to an animal may help a human too. May Almighty Allah show us the right path and to be kind to animals as well. May God make us the voice of voiceless.
The author hails from District Ganderbal and is presently doing DMLT from kirmaniya Institute of I.T. and can be reached at ehsaanamy133@gmail.com