Muslims don’t like dogs? Many of them don’t.
As a non-Muslim, I find this attitude shocking and hard to understand. I found this out about six months ago chatting with some Muslims on an international forum. Somehow the subject of dogs came up. What I heard from them was that dogs are dirty, angels never enter a house with a dog, black dogs are evil, and Allah will penalize you for owning a dog. This news was so distressing I had to research further, and this article is the result of that.
In the Islamic religion they have the Quran that can be compared to the Christian Bible. There are also the Hadiths, which are supposed to be a supplementation for the quran. The Quran is to be considered the word of Allah, whereas the hadith is to be considered the word of Muhammad. Hadiths started being written hundreds of years after Muhammad’s death. I find it interesting that the hadiths with negativity towards dogs, directly contradicts the teachings of the quran.
Here is a quote from an Islamic Web site called submission.org, “Fabricated hadiths contradict the Quran. Many of them narrated by Abu Hurayra. Abu Hurayra, whose name is translated as, father of the little cat, hated dogs and women and from his mouth came many hadiths that insulted women and cursed the dogs and make them undesirable animals that need to be avoided and in other hadiths killed.” There is a small number of Muslims that believe the hadiths are corrupt, and among them you may find some dog lovers. That is the dividing line. If a Muslim follows the hadiths they will dislike dogs and in some circumstances may even try to hurt them. As a side note, if you ever take a look at the hadiths many of them are violent in nature. While the quran seems to discourage violence.
There is not a single phrase in the Quran with anything negative about dogs. In Suri 18 of the Quran, it tells us a story about a group of men in a cave with a dog. In this story it says that angels entered the cave. Yet, in the hadith about dogs it clearly states that angels will never enter a place where a dog is inside. If Quran is considered to be the actual word of Allah, only conclusion to be made here is that certain hadiths are simply based on the prejudice of some Muslim scholars.
One of the most recent troubling events regarding Muslims and dogs is what is going on in Iran right now. The Iranian government has actually declared dogs to be un-Islamic and dirty. They are actually confiscating pet dogs and taking them to a filthy place and shoving them in small cages. Iran is threatening dog owners that they are un-Islamic. They are actually taking a risk to get their dog back. Their dog may die in the detention center or it may be given back providing that they never show dog in public. (source)
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be measured by the way its animals are treated.”
