An all-Muslim city council in Michigan approved an amendment to a city ordinance that would allow religious animal sacrifices at home Tuesday.
Hamtramck City Council voted 3-2 in favor of an amendment that would allow the city’s majority Muslim population to sacrifice animals for religious observances at their homes after the current ban on such practices was upheld in December. That vote was met with protests and cries of religious discrimination leading the council to revisit the issue this month, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Hamtramck last year had its first Muslim mayor and became the first city in the U.S. to have an all-Muslim city council elected by voters.https://t.co/xTCahDIk45
— Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) January 11, 2023
Citing a Supreme Court case that prohibited bans on animal sacrifice by those of the Santeria faith, Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib and his supporters argued upholding a ban on religious animal slaughter could lead to lawsuits against the city for civil rights violations, the outlet reported. (RELATED: Virginia Priestess Sacrifices Animals, Claims Constitutional Protection)
“If somebody wants to do it, they have a right to do their practice,” Mayor Pro Tem Mohammed Hassan said, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Further, Ghalib noted that some Orthodox Jews come to Hamtramck every year before Yom Kippur to slaughter chickens at a halal butcher run by Muslims, the outlet reported. During the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, animals such as goats or sheep are often sacrificed and their meat is shared with family, friends and the poor, the New York Post reported.
Not all supported lifting the ban with some residents and animal rights advocates arguing that such practices would lead to animal cruelty and cause sanitation problems in the city.
“The majority of people, including the majority of Muslims that I know, do not want slaughter to be allowed in the city of Hamtramck,” Councilwoman Amanda Jaczkowski said last summer, according to the outlet. Jaczkowski, however, flipped her vote at Tuesday’s meeting on the grounds of religious discrimination concerns.
“Do we want to risk the city getting sued?” she reportedly asked.
The new ordinance will maintain a current prohibition against the local ownership of cows, goats and sheep, except for “temporary religious sacrificial purposes as permitted by law.” The new ordinance also protects against animal cruelty stating that animals must be killed in a “humane way” and charges residents performing such sacrifices to “dispose of all waste in accordance with local, state, and federal law,” the Detroit Free Press reported.