Thoughts on Hari Raya Korban
This is the season for sacrifice. The last time I witnessed a bloody scene of korban ritual was around 7 or 8 years ago. Then again about 2 years ago I had to stand next to the goat being slaughtered for my daughter’s akikah. I had no choice. I was expected to see it being slaughtered and perform the niat to validate the ritual. Gradually over the years, I have sort of developed a feeling of apprehension towards doing it again. Unless I have to watch it I’d rather stay away from the whole episode and only join in later to skin off the dead animal. I guess the apprehension is not so much on the idea of killing another creature to put it on your dinner table but more because of the bloody scene that I have seen. A scene that for most of us, especially those who live in towns and cities are mostly kept hidden from. I was a bit traumatized. I don’t like seeing blood; even less when it involves killing. The sight of the red stuff makes me feel sick. How I wish meat could be grown on trees and we didn’t have to spill blood to enjoy our meal.
Yet when I was a child living in the kampong, witnessing such a scene was normal. It even had an air of a little celebration. We used to kill animals and little creatures on almost a daily basis. I had no qualms about piercing worms from head to tail onto my fishing hooks for use as bait to catch the keli, puyu or haruan. No guilt about disemboweling the poor fish alive and cutting them up into pieces for my barbeque dinner. But this was in a different time and setting. I was living in the kampong in a time when we would do most things by ourselves. Each household would rear chicken, cows or buffaloes for themselves. If not at our own kampong house backyard, surely our next door neighbour would keep some poultry. Every household had its own supply of almost everything they need. We led a self-sufficient life. Occasionally throughout the year, and almost certainly during festive seasons, either you catch your free range kampong chicken and help your father to slaughter them, or you would see your neighbour do theirs. It was perhaps more than mere curiosity to watch these animals being slaughtered after which you would help to pluck the feathers. The females in the family would then cook it for the family special dinner that evening. There was no place to buy chicken meat grown on protein-enhanced chicken feed. The term ayam daging or ayam proses was not yet in use.
These days the job of slaughtering animals so that we can enjoy our hamburgers or crispy fried chicken is mainly done behind closed doors in specialized buildings using automated machines on an industrial scale. The killing is done by people specifically employed to do this job. Most of us would not want to see the process anyway. What we see delivered to our table in an air-conditioned fast food restaurant, entertained with the liveliest piped music from America’s latest hits has been sanitized so much that we completely forget that life has to be sacrificed before it gets to our plate. The lively music, the exquisite décor and the clean premises are so that we are not reminded of the dirty and bloody scene that the chicken has to go through before it gets from the farm to our dinner plate.
I believe this sanitization happens every day in the wider world too. In politics, in order to shape popular support to a certain direction, some media outlets would only mention in passing things like “fifteen including children and women die in drone attack in Northern Afghanistan” omitting any graphic images that can draw sympathy towards the unfortunate souls. Even in circumstances like the dramatic felling of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, horrible images are screened out and instead a more acceptable version would be flashed on the screen and repeated over and over.
In case you are still wondering the connection between the ritual of sacrifice on Hari Raya Korban, the keli barbeque and the bombing of the twin towers, never mind. I don’t see a clear link either. The point I am trying to make is that we become more objectionable to violence scenes being shown to us as we only watch the much sanitized version of killing and human tragedies. For our own sanity, the gruesome realities of life and destruction that human beings are capable of are filtered out. We ignore the fact that even in our everyday life, we outsource to specialists to do all these unpleasant things on our behalf. For the killing of animals for our food we let the slaughter house workers do it, while for the killing of enemies, the soldiers and unmanned drones finish up the job for us. We can sleep well at night because we don’t see disturbing images of bodies being blown up to pieces. And we can still go on with our life as if nothing unpleasant has ever happened.
