By: Areeba Chaudhry
“If they breathe they live. If they live they feel. If they feel they love. If they love they are aware. If they are aware they have a soul.” Anthony Douglas Williams.
If there’s one word that has always made me curious then it’s the word “wild”. Such an insignificant word yet it becomes such a powerful and graceful one if associated with breathing beings. Wild animals have always been shrouded in mystery yet their presence carries a certain amount of mightiness because after all there are only a few things that have the power to make a human cower. They like their privacy, hate any interactions with humans, yet some of them somehow end up in the clutches of humans and some are lucky enough to steer clear of humans. What of the unfortunate ones that do end up in the hands of humans? Dead, if not then taken, held captive, abused, and eventually killed.
Bear and boar baiting is a common so-called sport here in a country where we find plenty of monsters hiding behind the façade of decency and humanity. Black bears (the few that are found in our country) and wild boars that are unable to defend themselves, are forced to fight trained dogs, the kind of dogs that can tear you into pieces in a matter of seconds, but the animals’ suffering doesn’t end after one fight, they are never allowed to die instead when they reach the precipice of death they are hauled back to life, out of the rings and then they are made to go through it all again. A bear turned blind due to all his injuries after decades of trying to save himself, yet he received no mercy and was still given no choice but to fight for his life but that’s just one story, just one. How many of them face the same fate, die the same miserable deaths while never knowing what being free is like? What being loved is like? How it feels to walk free in forests, to live with their own, to have an existence without so much pain?
People laugh while living, breathing being bleeds to the point of death, while it wonders what its fault is? What did it do to deserve so much pain and suffering?. Imagine enduring a lifetime of so much pain, imagine wanting to plead for your life when you can’t speak, imagine the fear, the feeling of doom when you see the ring that brings so much pain, blood, and torture. Imagine the pain when you feel unrelenting canines biting into your skin, tearing you from limb to limb while your heart continues to beat, while your brain refuses to give up. What do they think when they are subjected to such torture? Do they curse humans? Or do they silently complain to their Lord? What do they feel when they are thrown into the rings where they see so many of their brethren losing the will to live, to taste freedom? Where death becomes their ultimate escape and a chance for them to have peace? Why doesn’t that leave you shook to your core? How many rare and truly beautiful beasts lose their lives and are subjected to a lifetime of torture for something as worthless as a Jacket, a shoe, a makeup product, a handbag? If you haven’t found alternatives for things that involve a living being bashed to death then are you any less of a monster than the ones torturing them? Bunnies are cute, no one can think about hurting them right? Yet they are based on the heads till they die for their fur to end up in your coat linings. The word “faux” might not matter much to you but it makes a difference for the ones who lose their lives for things as pathetic as your coats, handbags, eyelashes, etc.
There are people that say the zoos in our country are educational tools. What do they teach your kids? How to kill a healthy animal? How to starve wild animals? How to laugh at their misery? How to tease and torture them with the freedom they can never have? How to confine them in small cages and give a whole new meaning to the word “wild”? How to drag a polar bear away from its habitat, lock it behind bars, and make people laugh at its expense? Cruelty is what they teach your kids, it sounds like the perfect stuff for your kids to learn, doesn’t it?. Kavan, the elephant in Marghazar Zoo that was supposed to live in a herd with its partner instead he was chained and kept completely alone after his partner’s death and developed serious psychological issues thanks to the Zoo management. The zoos that have killed hundreds of animals are supposed to be educational tools for your kids?
Then there are people who think they have any right to own a wild animal, they buy lions, other big cats, and wild animals and for what? To show that they have wealth? If you have so much money to waste then why not feed the poor with it? Their blessings have to be better than the animals’ curse no? They buy them, chain them in their farmhouses and “tame” them. How stupid do you have to be to try and tame a WILD animal? Is it a joke? Is their life a joke? Then there are ones who say that they buy wild animals, keep them in small cages, expose them to extreme weather and call themselves “animal lovers”. Now this pathetic practice has become a trend in our country because so the crappy media pages, handled by brainless idiots have started encouraging this. You’ll find plenty of these videos on Urdu point. A page named Dogar reports posted some pictures with the caption “shehri ne shair ko bakri bana dia, ghar k bahir bandh rakha hai” so is this the same Ashraf ul makhlooqat that’s mentioned in our Holy book?
The world is evolving and so is our country, urbanization is taking place with more and more land being used to expand cities. The lack of adequate policies, proper laws, and awareness has led to excessive deforestation, millions of trees destroyed and burnt so that huge and pretty much useless building can be built, but at what cost? This comes with horrifying consequences but well because these consequences don’t affect us directly and instantly so who cares about making it easy for the next generations? Thousands of animals are left without food, shelter, and homes for every forest that is destroyed or burnt. Thousands of them burn alive along with the forests, some starve to death and some die because they don’t know how to survive outside their natural habitat. Some who do manage to live, are forced to live in hiding, live off scraps, breathe polluted air, but even though they make peace with this lifestyle they aren’t left alone. So what happens when big cats and predators attack our livestock simply because it’s in their nature to do so because they want to feed their cubs, because we destroyed their natural habitat, stole their food sources from them? We kill them without batting an eyelid, without thinking that they are endangered, without thinking that their extermination will surely lead us to our doom.
A similar incident took place in Hoper valley a few days ago, where a female snow leopard (fewer than 400 left in Pakistan) was killed and her cubs disappeared. The locals of GB have raised their concerns after around 25 sheep were found dead and some injured as a result of a leopard attack, most of them are still bitter about it and promise retribution which means another leopard might end up dying at their hands. If this continues to happen then these majestic and rare cats are going to become a myth too. Who is at fault here though? Certainly not the animal. Why not report these attacks to the wildlife department so that they can come up with a solution that will benefit both the locals and the animal? Why do we feel the need to take such extreme measures? Why do we feel the need to take revenge on an animal? It’s not like they do it purposefully, it’s their food. We can’t expect them to sit back and let their cubs starve to death when we wouldn’t do that either if we put ourselves in their shoes. Let’s think about something, how is it justified that you kill them to save your food and so that you don’t starve to death yet they got to die because they were pretty much doing the same for themselves and getting food for their cubs? Mainly, there is just one type of big cats left in Pakistan and it is the leopards (common leopards, snow leopards) that are pretty vulnerable as of now and will soon be regionally extinct just like lions and tigers if we continue to kill them like this.
Now the fate of the two cubs that disappeared is unknown since they haven’t been found yet, their survival chances out their all alone are pretty low. They won’t know how to hunt without a mother and starve or will probably end up becoming some other predator’s food. With only around 8000 of them found in the world, each and every one of them counts, this was three. The female would’ve reproduced a handful times had they left her alone, but instead of reporting it to the wildlife department a few idiots decided to hunt her down, kill her and then strike a pose with her carcass, speaks volumes about our mentality and how much progress we have made as a nation. Apart from this, the endangered leopards are killed for their fur while their cubs are sold.
Just like a lot of other gruesome things, our people calling trophy hunting a sport for human recreation is something that I can never understand, what good can come out of taking the life of a living being, hanging its head on your walls, or stuffing its body and using it as a showpiece? They look much better when they are alive, breathing, and walking. Other countries use wildlife and national parks as their tourist attractions while we just have one and we prefer using museums with animal carcasses as tourist attractions, our social media channels have been giving a lot of coverage to trophy hunters yet I don’t see our pious people issuing their fatwas since many Islamic scholars have declared that trophy hunting is forbidden in Islam. The Holy Prophet (PBUH) said in a hadith:
“Whoever kills a sparrow or anything bigger than that without a just cause, Allah will hold him accountable on the Day of Judgment”. The listeners asked, “O Messenger of Allah, what is a just cause?” He replied, “That he will kill it to eat, not simply to chop off its head and then throw it away.” (An–Nasa’i)
In another hadith he forbade distressing an animal by taking away its young ones:
We were on a journey with the Messenger of God, and he left us for a while. During his absence, we saw a bird called Hummara with its two young and took the young ones. The mother bird was circling above us in the air, beating its wings in grief, when the Prophet (PBUH) came back and said: 'Who has hurt the feelings of this bird by taking its young? Return them to her'. [Reported in Sahih]
I think orphaning two cubs by killing their mother while they are already on the verge of extinction is as horrendous as taking an animal’s babies away from it if not more. We have such twisted beliefs about religion that we are ready to do all sorts of sick, twisted stuff by using it yet we are such hypocrites that we won’t follow the real teachings of our religion, yet we’ll stay quiet when it comes to raising our voices for those who can’t do it for themselves, we are so disgusting that we’ll forget all about Islam when it forbids us to hurt those vulnerable beings. The suffering of these creatures doesn’t just end here. The monkeys used for our entertainment? How luxurious their life is? Separated from their mothers at a young age and made to do something they don’t understand, starved, and beaten if they don’t do what they are taught to. If this is what makes you or your children happy then that’s disgusting.
Who will stand for them if not us? They don’t deserve this cruelty because they are sentient beings too, they feel pain and they suffer the same as we do. Wild animals are called wild for the reason that they belong to the wild. Why can’t we let them run free and live because that’s what they are supposed to do? We steal their homes from them and wonder why they attack our livestock. We treat these animals so cruelly and then wonder why Allah does not grant us peace and mercy. There are people here that have the “help humans first" take on such matters but why say that when even our religion has declared good deeds done to an animal as meritorious as the ones done to a human? Humans can’t survive without wildlife, the earth will be destroyed without the wildlife, the ecosystems ruined yet we don’t find co-existence possible. Feeling sad for them won't help, we have raised our voices for them and if you can’t do anything for them then at least teach your kids compassion, mercy and love instead of paying only for them to see other beings getting tortured and exploited, because you owe them this.
(Image from here.)
Sorry for the typos guys😬