At the meat business he runs in Hamtramck, Mo Islam fields requests from Muslims to butcher and prepare animals in the manner their religion requires.
He usually expects plenty of business when families ask to process sacrificial meat, often from lambs, to distribute to others during the Eid al-Adha holiday, which this year is celebrated on Wednesday.
However, Islam is more concerned about the “competition” in the Wayne County community where he has long had ties: worshipers trying to butcher their own meat at home since the City Council voted to update its ordinance and codified state and federal laws on animal slaughter. And others worry about sanitation.
In January, the Hamtramck City Council approved updates to the city's ordinance outlining how residents can perform religious slaughters privately. The issue is sure to emerge as Muslims mark Eid al-Adha, also known as the "festival of sacrifice," which follows the end of Hajj, the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca.
While officials and activists say the custom is already legal, Mo Islam and others wonder about the implications for residents who have rarely, or never, processed their meat.
“It’s not easy to do,” Islam said. “How are they going to do it in a basement or outside?”
It has been five months since the council's move in the municipality of nearly 28,000 residents with a sizeable Muslim and immigrant population sparked national headlines and controversy. It is unknown how many sacrifices have occurred because the city doesn't require a permit process for it, City Manager Max Garbarino said.
City officials say their policy is not cause for alarm about Hamtramck’s famously small lots and narrow streets. They vow there'll be no backyards or streets congested with blood and entrails.
Since the ordinance vote, Mayor Amer Ghalib said, "We are getting some good response, and most people who sacrifice say that they will go do it outside of the city.” The city has not received complaints or issued citations, said Ghalib and Garbarino, who added the city "simply would enforce any ordinances that are already on the books if the need arises."
“The matter was pursued by a couple of individuals who wished to engage in the religious practice,” City Clerk Rana Faraj said. “Council then adopted an ordinance, in accordance with state law, that requires humane slaughter and disposal of all waste products in accordance with all applicable state and federal laws.”
Some in the city do not see a problem with private sacrifices.
“As long as they do it without jeopardizing the health of other residents, they should be able to,” said Nasr Hussain, vice president at the Islamic Center of Hamtramck, a mosque.
Still, others are leery supporters can perform it with proper sanitation.
“It would be interesting to see someone monitor it and to see how they maintain the hygiene and cleanliness and avoidance of flies and insects that may carry diseases,” said Imam Steve Mustapha Elturk, who leads the Islamic Organization of North America in Warren. “There are so many things involved in it, healthwise, that need to be addressed.”
How debate started
Talks about revising the animal ordinance started last year, partly due to some residents' desire for more clarity on feeding feral cats. In a resolution approved in December, the majority-Muslim City Council noted it needed “substantial updates and revisions.”
A subcommittee “thought our ordinance wasn’t clear enough, so they suggested banning the animal sacrifice in the city,” Ghalib said. “Some community members opposed that and three council members also opposed that suggestion.”
The eventual plan was to require residents who wanted to religiously sacrifice animals to notify the city clerk a week before with details, take “any and all actions necessary to restrict the act of sacrifice from public viewing” without exception, and allow officials time to inspect the site post-ritual to ensure thorough cleansing.
Word of the measure up for consideration reached the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Michigan chapter.
“We saw there was a necessity to be at the City Council meeting and make sure it wasn’t passed,” said Nour Ali, the director of safe spaces at CAIR-Michigan.
She and legal experts asserted the update would restrict community religious rights and place an undue burden on Muslim residents.
They pointed to the state’s Humane Slaughter of Livestock Act 163 of 1962, which says it does not “prohibit, abridge or in any way hinder the religious freedom of any person or group” and exempts ritual slaughter.
There also was the 1993 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case about a law in a Florida community that aimed to ban ritual animal sacrifices practiced by members of an African Cuban religion.
Hamtramck’s city attorney concluded the ruling “also prohibits restricting humane ritual slaughter based on First Amendment religious free exercise protections,” Faraj said.
Though scores of residents objected and called for keeping proposed restrictions, the council instead approved an ordinance update stating “ritual handling or other preparation of livestock for ritual slaughter are exempted from the terms of this chapter.”
How ordinance works
Animals must be killed by a humane method. One of the methods, the ordinance now notes, is “in accordance with ritual requirements of any religious faith whereby the animal suffers loss of consciousness by anemia of the brain caused by the simultaneous and instantaneous severance of the carotid arteries with a sharp instrument.”
It goes on to say: “Residents conducting ritual religious sacrifice shall dispose of all waste in accordance with local, state, and federal law.”
No advance notice or paperwork is required, Faraj said.
Such an ordinance “really hasn’t come up in a lot of places in the country because in roughly the last 30 years ... everyone treats this for the most part as a settled matter of law,” said David Rosengard, a managing attorney with California-based Animal Legal Defense Fund.
“If you let people kill goats or cows or chicken for food, you have to let people kill them for religious reasons as long as they do so humanely. ... What you can't do under the Constitution is create two different standards for religion and secular conduct."
Aman McLeod, an associate law professor at the University of Detroit Mercy, noted in the Florida U.S. Supreme Court case, “the city was really going after a specifically religious practice …, and that is discrimination against religion. And the court said that is not OK under the First Amendment. An ordinance that was more general in nature, that would prevent killing of animals within the limits of the city, perhaps. But it would have to apply to non-religious killing of animals.”
He added: “Laws can’t be motivated by a desire to stop a religious group from carrying out its religious rights.”
With that in mind, the city aimed to have a policy that would not risk costly litigation, Ghalib said in an email.
“We followed the federal rules and the Supreme Court decision," he said. "… Some people have been doing the sacrifice for decades, and they are not many, without causing any trouble to the residents. However, now they found out that what they have been doing is actually not an illegal practice.”
Hamtramck is an outlier
Ali said CAIR is unaware of other cities in Michigan or elsewhere with measures similar to the one in Hamtramck.
In Dearborn, which also boasts a large Muslim population, no such ordinance is being considered, a city representative said.
Hamtramck might be an outlier, Rosengard said. “I don’t think a lot of jurisdictions have felt the need to pass ordinances essentially reiterating this Supreme Court rule," he said.
For Muslims, ritual slayings are more common during Eid al-Adha, which memorializes how their holy text, the Quran, tells of the Prophet Abraham, also called Ibrahim, willingly sacrificed his son to God, Elturk said. “He passed the test, and God replaced his son with a ram.”
To recall that sacrifice, Muslims can pay a butcher, or through a group, to have an animal slaughtered and then distributed to the poor.
It is considered obligatory during the holiday but can be performed at other special occasions, such as a wedding, birth or graduation, Ali said.
She notes other religions use the practice and private sacrifices are not unusual for Muslims living in other countries.
“It’s a much more common practice overseas in the comfort of one’s home because people have courtyards,” Ali said.
She pushes back against criticism of allowing Hamtramck residents to do the same or some who called the practice “barbaric” before the council vote in January.
“We should respect people’s sacredly held beliefs, especially if they are not hurting another human,” Ali said.
A butcher's view
Berry & Sons Islamic Slaughter House in Detroit's Eastern Market, which once had a Hamtramck location and is touted as the oldest such business in the area, anticipates completing orders to slay at least a couple thousand lambs for customers far beyond Michigan, co-owner Yasseen Rababeh said.
The business specializes in halal slaughter techniques and even fields national requests amid the many arriving from Muslims in regional communities, such as Dearborn, he told The News.
Rising costs associated with inflation and other trends are greater concerns on the bottom line than Hamtramck's measure, Rababeh added.
"I don’t think it’s going to do a whole lot," he said. "They were legalizing something that was legal. I don’t think it held back people very much."
Still, a bitter taste lingers for some in the city that includes roughly 40% who were foreign-born, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Diane Lee, a Hamtramck resident since 2007, vividly recalls the negative online bleating after the ordinance update. The thought of animal sacrifices unfolding in homes or garages also is unnerving.
"I'm all about religious and spiritual beliefs, however you want to practice. But that doesn’t mean the neighbor next door is going to like it," she said. "I've always loved Hamtramck for its diversity, but I'm looking at the majority, which includes also Muslims, who were against this because of the health and sanitation reasons. Unless you absolutely know what you're doing, just go to a professional business that does it."
Mo Islam was among the critics who hoped the council would constrain the practice. He wondered if amateurs would bother checking the rules he and other butchers follow at their businesses to ensure proper sanitation. Or if the city can check the environmental impact of blood draining into sewers.
“I don’t know how they’re going to handle it,” Islam said, noting other issues could arise. “It’s not only sacrificing animals. It’s dangerous, also. People could get injured.”
Ghalib said: “We as a government, and as community leaders, keep educating people and recommending them to go out of the city to do it in the designated areas, to avoid any violations that may result from improper waste disposal, not hiding it from public views, or other issues.”
While some in the city may opt to sacrifice locally, others “prefer going to the farm or somewhere else," said Hussain, whose mosque has about 200 members attending services on Friday.
Others take the new era in stride.
For some residents, the animal rules have faded from memory and city chatter, replaced by more pressing issues such as parking meters and bike lanes, said Bill Meyer, executive director of OneHamtramck LLC.
“The ones who are against it are still against it. They’re going to try to respect each other," Meyer said. "It’s not that big of a deal in the city. We’re not going to see animals killed in the street.”
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