India, May 31 -- Visible ritual slaughter sparks outrage while industrial animal suffering remains systematically ignored every single day

To name a killing is to make it arguable. The moment an act of slaughter is declared, given a date, a theology, a visible place in the calendar, it becomes available to scrutiny, to protest, to the seasonal cycle of debate. The ego is comfortable with this. What it cannot examine, it cannot threaten; and what it has named, it can examine indefinitely, returning each year to the same argument, feeling the motion of moral engagement without disturbing anything it has arranged never to look at.

Every year, as Eid al-Adha approaches, the debate reappears: should the practice be restricted, is public sacr...