On New Year’s Day, part of Belgium put into effect a ban on the way Muslims and Jews slaughter animals. The law declares that the animals must be stunned insensible before they are killed, a practice widely applied in the global food industry but rejected by some observant Muslims and Jews, who insist that their time-honored method of slashing an animal’s neck is mandated by their religion and fully humane.

It should be obvious to any reader even from this brief summary that there is bound to be impassioned debate on the issue. And indeed animal-rights advocates and religious leaders have squared off on social media and the internet, citing volumes of scriptural injunctions and scientific studies.

In fact, Muslims and Jews in Belgium and other countries that ban ritual slaughter can still import halal or kosher meat from other countries, and many Muslim communities do allow some forms of electrical stunning that satisfy civil codes. The debate, moreover, is hardly new. Regulations across the European Union require stunning an animal before slaughter, a practice that generally means either firing a bolt into its brain or an electric shock. Most European countries allow religious exceptions, but several — including Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Slovenia — do not.

But on a continent with a long history of anti-Semitism and a newer spread of animosity toward Muslim immigrants, any regulation that appears to discriminate against Jewish or Muslim practices and traditions — circumcision and dress are other examples — is bound to be viewed by the religious as insulting and hostile.