Something is rotten in the state of Denmark By Eric Rassbach, Deputy General Counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty

By Eric Rassbach, Deputy General Counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty

“To be or not to be?” is a lot tougher question than the one everyone should be asking about Denmark today — “Why did Denmark really ban kosher and halal slaughter?” The answer is sadly quite simple–to discriminate against its Jewish and Muslim citizens. The government claims that it is because it wishes to allow only humane slaughter, but the evidence is at best equivocal. Many countries, including the United States, treat kosher and halal slaughter as definitionally humane methods of slaughter.

By contrast, bans on kosher and halal slaughter are closely linked to antisemitism. Indeed, as we pointed out in a friend-of-the-court brief in New Zealand several years ago, bans on kosher slaughter were typical of the interwar period when antisemitism was on the rise in Europe. The main difference now is that bans on ritual slaughter are now directed at not just Jews, but Muslims also. Like attempted bans on circumcision in Europe, the motivation is to target religious minorities by attacking their millennia-old religious practices as inhumane. Something rotten indeed.