Today’s Vegetarian Elite will be presented in Arabic, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Nepali, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Thai.

From the United Arab Emirates a flower of compassion blossoms, reaching the hearts of those she touches with her fragrance of kindness. On today’s Vegetarian Elite, it is our pleasure to introduce to you that beautiful flower of the desert, Abir Alsayed, a vegan director and producer for Hot Spot Films in Dubai. Ms. Alsayed also works as an independent filmmaker, freelancing for Al Jazeera, a leading international Arabic news network based in Doha, Qatar.

There are a lot of wishes that one hopes to achieve in life. On the professional level, I would like to evolve more as a director and do films on a larger scale. Of course, thank God, I’m now working for a channel that has millions of viewers. However, there is still the dream to make movies to reach the largest number of people through festivals and the like – and to make movies that have issues that are really important to me.

As a documentary filmmaker, Ms. Alsayed writes, “Films are a tool of change, they are a tool for the voiceless to be heard.” Today on our show, as throughout most of her life, Ms. Alsayed speaks out for the many voiceless – our beloved animal co-inhabitants. In fact, her love for life is an intrinsic quality that has flowered within her heart from a very young age.

I’m a vegetarian. I cannot say how long because I’ve been a vegetarian since I was born. When I was young, they kept asking me to eat meat. I did not see it as meat, but as an animal, not food. He is a being that has a life, children, and has... I did not look at it as something could be placed in a dish to be eaten.

In spite of being the only vegetarian in her family, Ms. Alsayed stayed strong in her conviction to have no part in the taking of animal lives while growing up.

I am originally from Syria. In Syria, there is a lot of vegetarian food, but they always consider it as appetizers being offered before the main meal. The main meal is always meat. When I was little and my family was invited somewhere, when they gave me food and saw that I ate only the vegetarian dishes, they’d say, “You did not eat anything!” You must eat meat in order to be considered that you ate well. So my situation developed further due to the love for animals or the aversion to live on [another’s] blood. So, frankly, I can live relying on vegetables, not on blood for nourishment.

As she grew older and understood the truth and cruelty involved in the milk industry, Ms. Alsayed decided to do away entirely with all animal products from her diet.

Then, as I grew older – I was almost 17 years old – I decided that even an egg is a small animal, so I said, “If I do not eat chicken, why should I eat eggs?” So I decided to stop eating eggs. Now, since I did not like eggs very much, it was not difficult to stop eating it. But sometimes, it was difficult to stop eating other things that contained eggs, such as cakes or anything else that I love which had eggs. But thank God, when I stopped eating it, I felt comfortable and there was no longer a kind of slavery to anything.

I am free and able to take decisions and to put any decision in my life into practice. There is nothing that makes me attached to anything physical in this life. Then, when I was almost 24 years old, which was five years later, I decided... I care a lot about natural nutrition and spirituality that I read in a lot of books. It is through books that I read about how they add hormones to milk and how the dairy industry has harmed a lot of animals and humans, where the animals are sick and the diseases are transmitted to milk. In order not keep them (cows) from being sick, they give them antibiotics. Ultimately, all these things enter our bodies. So, I decided to stop all dairy products, where I read the ingredients and stop anything that is related to it.

Although it was a decision borne from compassion, Ms. Alsayed was surprised to experience many benefits after her switch to a pure, plant-based diet.

Of course, it took nine months to do so. But imagine that after one week… I used to have a breathing problem during sleep, so after a week I was able to sleep easily and felt very comfortable and happy. After I stopped consuming milk, my health has improved; the same thing happened with my psychological wellbeing.

I started to look for dietary supplements, and come to view the whole universe as one integrated unit. Food is no longer just something we eat – no, it is a part of an integrated life system of this universe. So I started to look at food as nutrition and not just food – that is, it is food which nourish the body, soul, and mind. This is, of course, what made me feel happy that I have become a vegan.

We’ll be back in just a moment to continue our visit with Ms. Alsayed in the desert of the United Arab Emirates. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Vegetarian Elite on Supreme Master Television and our feature on Ms. Alsayed, director and producer of Hot Spot Films in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Even before she personally experienced the benefits of a vegan diet, Ms. Alsayed had always encouraged others to adopt a more compassionate, animal-free dietary lifestyle.

When my family was invited to meals, I went to eat with them. Everyone was surprised, “How can you not eat meat? You should eat meat!” As I grew older and people started to invite me or I invited them to certain places, they were often surprised. They were surprised when I prepared a great banquet with only vegetarian food. I tried to encourage and show them the new products, the new alternatives. For example, instead of animal butter, there is a vegetarian one.

There is soy milk or rice milk, etc. There is vegetarian cheese and many of these things, so it is no longer difficult to abstain from anything. I always show them that there are alternatives It is possible to make a table full of nice vegetarian dishes. There is no need to harm other animals or our bodies by eating meat. Of course, I encouraged my family a lot, and my mother is now trying to follow a Japanese method called macrobiotics. But my husband – I am married – used to eat a lot of meat.

He could not accept the idea that I am a vegan, ever, neither he nor his family. So we stayed together four years; he is a doctor. Throughout the four years, he kept telling me that meat and milk are good and I have to eat meat. Finally, I started sending him all the published research which showed that meat is harmful. So, after four years, he also became a vegan like me . Now he is starting to warn me when I overlook and purchase any product that contains a hormonal component or milk. He tells me, “Be careful, it contains so and so.” Thus, he became more of a vegan more than me.

To further emphasize the urgent need for a global switch to a plant-based diet, Ms. Alsayed discussed some of the detrimental impacts of milk and meat consumption.

There are two reasons why I have become a vegan. The first reason is that the dairy industry is not as we imagine, the way they show it in the animation where it is the farmer who milks the cow. No, the milk industry is a very destructive one, both to animals and humans – primarily to the animals because they deprive the calf of the milk and then kill him. Secondly, the cows remain in a constant state of pregnancy and frequent childbirth to produce milk.

Just for the milk, their udders may swell to an unnatural degree. Thus, the cows get sick; and they cannot move around because they keep them in a very tight space. So what happens is that these cows get sick and transmit diseases to the milk. The biggest problem is that in order to prevent the death of cows, they give them a lot of antibiotics, which as we know, do not disappear even if they are in water. So, all of these antibiotics enter the milk; all the hormones that are given for growth and for fattening up the cattle enter the milk.

So, the fact is that the milk has become a liquid full of harmful hormones, of pesticides even, because the feed is full of pesticides. As a result, milk has become a poisonous liquid containing a lot of toxic substances. Of course, this affect me a lot for the following reason: First, the milk is a reason for killing the animals, as well as being harmful to humans. There are research studies which claim that milk is related to the lack of hormonal balance in the body which eventually leads to cancer.

So, milk is fatal to animals and humans, so why should we have it? Another reason, of course, that made me become a vegan is that when I was consuming milk… It is true that I am a vegan now, but I ate cheese and other things; I did not vary the food. That is, I did not eat things such as grain, seeds…other things, including vegetables. When I stopped eating dairy products, my food has become more diverse, healthier, and more respectful of the environment.

Of course, regarding the environment: A vegan who interested in the environment knows that if we are vegan, we do a lot to protect the environment. Because, in order to feed animals… They say that in order to make one hamburger we have to cultivate thousands of hectares of crops as food for animals. A lot of forests are being cut to be cultivated with crops as a food for animals. When these animals have these crops once, twice, or three time, the plants will not grow again.

Thus, there are a lot of arable lands that are no longer fertile and this causes famine in the world. We know the role of forests in purifying the air and how they help the environment. These lands are converted to grazing pastures. And during eating, the cattle emit gases that lead to the warming of the atmosphere. So what happens is that we increase the temperature of the planet and decrease the number of green places on it. Hence, if we are interested in the environment, in our health or the health of animals, we should be vegans.

Loving viewers, thank you for joining us for this episode of Vegetarian Elite. Join us again next week for part 2 of “Abir Alsayed: The Heart of a Compassionate Syrian Filmmaker.” Between Master and Disciples is coming up next, here on Supreme Master Television. Together, may we create loving world of peace this New Year, with the awareness of God’s love in every sunrise.