France, Muslims at Odds Over Sheep Sacrifices

On the eve of a major Islamic feast, French health authorities and Muslim leaders were at odds Saturday over restrictions on the ritual sacrifice of sheep.

Many of France’s 3 million Muslims want to slaughter a sheep on Eid al Adha today, commemorating Abraham’s killing of a sheep instead of his son Ismael, as related in the Koran. It also marks the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.

Ritual slaughtering is allowed by French law, but only under controlled conditions that Muslim leaders say are unsatisfactory on religious grounds and prohibitively expensive.

Sheep must be slaughtered by a religious authority approved by the state Veterinary Services Department. The sacrifice must be carried out in a licensed slaughterhouse.

Health authorities say illegal sacrifices spread disease.

The cost of a legal sacrifice, not including the animal, ranges up to $17--a burden for some low-income Muslims, Islamic authorities say.

Others complain that sacrifices in a slaughterhouse are overly hurried. And Muslims in the capital must travel to the suburbs to find a slaughterhouse.

“The Koran indicates that one must carefully choose the animal, and there is an entire ritual for the sacrifice,” said Mustapha Slimani, an Islamic-approved butcher in the French city of Marseilles. “How can that be respected in a slaughterhouse where the sacrifices are carried out on an assembly line?”

“It is too expensive,” said Sheik Abbas, rector of the main mosque in Paris, deploring the “commercial exploitation” of the feast in France.