God Made Me Muslim and Vegan – Interview with Duke McLeod (vegan), Part 1 of 3

“If we think of compassion and justice as the two pillars of Islamic moral philosophy and spiritual practice, then a vegan lifestyle is the best way in my honest opinion that we can apply these values and how we can live them in our day-to-day life. The way we sustain ourselves is really important for our own spiritual and physical health. If we’re eating cruelty, if we are eating disease, if we are eating fear, we will take that in.”

This insightful quote is from Mr. Duke McLeod (vegan), a Sufi and Social Scientist. He is a PhD researcher in Social Anthropology at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and his amazing ongoing research is on Islamic veganism with the aim to support advocacy groups in promoting vegan lifestyles more effectively. In addition, he co-founded the Islamic Veg platform with inspiring vegan scholars to encourage the global Muslim community to go vegan.

“Then veganism is most certainly not only aligned with the spiritual values of justice and compassion, which are key in Islam, but it would be encouraged. There’s no way that any of the animal products that you are getting in the supermarket, the mass-produced ones from those factory farms, there’s no way that they are in line with the ethical principles of Islam. We can even say, if we’re going down the more religious kind of legal road of Sharia law, etc., if we apply these regulations strictly, none of these products would be Halal.”

“Every single chapter of the Qur’an, except for one, starts with ‘Bismillah, al-Rahman, al-Rahim’ or ‘In the name of God, the most merciful and compassionate.’ And if we think about God as a loving and compassionate entity, then we are encouraged to strive after and become Godly ourselves or embodying those values. And this is the key value which every chapter starts with, then maybe that’s the one we should focus on and just show maximum compassion. And the vegan lifestyle is in my opinion a very great, if not the best, way to show that compassion to non-human animals.”

“Another one, that is reported by Abdullah Ibn Umar ‘The Prophet cursed the one who treated animals harshly.’ So, I don’t want to be cursed by my Prophet. ‘Whoever treats harshly a living being and then does not repent, God will treat him just as harshly on judgment day.’”