The Jihad on Man’s Best Friend

You may have heard that “in Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” but did you know that in the Muslim world, they’re exterminating them — by the millions?

In early January, it was reported that a whopping three million dogs were going to be killed in Morocco:

In a letter to FIFA, Jane Goodall, a prominent animal rights campaigner, accused the organization of ignoring “a horrific act of barbarity” and “large-scale killings… [Y]ou have been presented with detailed dossiers documenting these horrific acts [of dog slayings], most of which are conducted in the most brutal and cruel fashion imaginable, and yet appear to have ignored them.”

Sadly, such barbaric behavior against what is otherwise considered “man’s best friend” is not uncommon in the Muslim world.

Last summer, Turkey began the “greatest dog massacre ever recorded in modern history”:

Before that, according to a November 2022 report, “The mayor of Hebron [a Palestinian city] offered 20 shekels to anyone who kills a dog in his city. Palestinians took to the streets, torturing and killing dozens of dogs.” The report is accompanied by a picture of what appeared to be Palestinians beating or striking to death a dog with sticks.

A few months before that, in July 2022, in the words of a report titled “Unspeakable Cruelty,”

One can go on and on with similar stories, but they will break your heart to read them. So we’ll stop making the point, which is sufficiently clear — but if you really need another one, check out what Qatar did in 2021.

To be sure, not all Muslims are inhumane to dogs. For example, the Animal and Environment Association in Bethlehem, the only animal shelter in the West Bank, issued a statement condemning the mayor of Hebron’s recent “bloody campaign,” which “resulted in killing many dogs, [by] shooting, hanging, abusing, running over them by cars. What happened today is beyond humanity and ethics … No religion would accept such barbaric actions toward innocent animals.”

And here we come to it: Is this true? Does no religion — including the one in question, Islam — “accept such barbaric actions toward innocent animals”?

To answer this question, and as with all questions concerning what is and is not Islamic, we must turn to the religion’s founder, Muhammad.

As it happens, he detested dogs, to the point of calling for their arbitrary extermination. According to Abdullah bin Omar, as recorded in the canonical (sahih) hadith collection of al-Muslim, “The Messenger of Allah used to order the killing of dogs, so we used to send [men] to Medina and its adjoining vicinity, and we spared no dog but rather killed it.” [My translation of Arabic text.]

Muhammad later modified his decision by allowing dogs that earn their keep by herding, hunting, or guarding to go unmolested, though the hate for them remained: angels, the prophet of Allah warned, would never visit or bless homes that keep dogs.

In short, and as one modern day anti-dog fatwa, or Islamic decree, on the popular Islam Question &Answer website concludes:

Despite all this, and because the West must pretend that any accusation against Islam is unwarranted, it remains complicit in the abuse of dogs. According to one report, “The U.S. government spends millions of dollars to train bomb-sniffing dogs essential to federal and local law enforcement capabilities but some are gifted to foreign countries that abuse them.” The nations listed are Bahrain, Lebanon, Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco, and Syria — all Muslim-majority (and we’ve already seen Morocco’s behavior).

Moreover, Muslim hostility for dogs has reached and is causing problems in the West. Reports of Muslim cab drivers in the USA, Europe, Canada, and Australia refusing to pick up blind passengers because they are accompanied by seeing eye-dogs are becoming increasingly common. In one instance in the UK, a Muslim cabbie, Abandi Kassim, cited “my religion” as the reason for denying service to a blind man accompanied by his seeing-eye dog.

Incidentally, and considering that certain Islamic teachings and scriptures assert that the life of a non-Muslim, of an infidel, is of equal value to the life of a dog, here is one more reason why Islam mandates hate for all non-Muslims.