The Debate Surrounding Religious Rules for Slaughtering Animals

THERE are some religious-freedom arguments where even the time-honoured principle of “live and let live” fails to provide democracies with any easy answers. One such dispute concerns animal slaughter. It is an issue which can create unlikely coalitions, uniting Muslims and Jews (who share certain beliefs about how animals should be killed for meat) against an odd combination of animal-lovers, secularists and the nationalist right.