Islamic Dog Hatred & Animal Rights Activists’ Silence

First published on FrontPage Magazine.

By Enza Ferreri


[Note: in the above video two German Shepherd dogs are attacked and pelted with bricks by Muslims in a street of Casablanca, Morocco.]


In the UK a Muslim taxi driver recently refused to give a lift to a disabled woman's dog, alleging that it broke the rules of Ramadan. Despite the fact that by law no taxi driver can refuse to carry a disabled passenger or assistance animal unless he is medically exempt, the man has not lost his taxi licence and has not been fired. The owner of the taxi firm said he would respect the driver's religious beliefs.

This is not the first time and won’t be the last that Islamic and Western attitudes to dogs conflict.

There have been many cases, both in Europe and North America, of Muslim taxi and bus drivers refusing to let dogs in – even guide dogs for the blind –, of police not letting dogs near Muslim suspects or prisoners, of Muslim prison inmates being given new clothes and bedding after police sniffer dogs search their cells, of dogs being banned from touching copies of the Quran and other Islamic items in prison cells, of sniffer dogs trained to spot terrorists at train stations no longer allowed to come into contact with Muslim passengers and fitted with leather bootees to cover their paws when searching mosques and Muslim homes, of blind or disabled people accompanied by dogs facing Muslim hostility in hospitals, supermarkets and from Muslim bus passengers or turned away from restaurants, of Western citizens being handcuffed and threatened with arrest for walking leashed and well-behaved dogs close to Muslim rallies: the list could go on.

Pronouncements about dogs are not in the Quran but are numerous in the various hadiths, collections of traditions containing sayings and deeds of the prophet Muhammad which form the basis of Islamic law.

Dogs for Muslims are "impure", “unclean” and “evil”. For example, the Muslim website Islam Q&A says:

It is not permissible for a Muslim to keep a dog, unless he needs this dog for hunting, guarding livestock or guarding crops…

With regard to keeping dogs, this is haraam [forbidden by God] and is in fact a major sin, because the one who keeps a dog, except those for which an exception has been made, will have two qiraats [a measure of rewards for good actions] deducted from his reward every day.

It is by the wisdom of Allaah that like calls to like and evil calls to evil. It is said that the kaafirs, Jews, Christians and communists in the east and the west all keep dogs, Allaah forbid. Each one takes his dog with him and cleans it every day with soap and other cleansing agents. But even if he were to clean it with the water of all the seas in the world and all the soap in the world, it would never become pure! Because its impurity is inherent, and inherent impurity cannot be cleansed except by destroying it and erasing it altogether.

Another Islamic site, Albalagh, explains:

Jibra'eel (Álayhi Salaam) said that we, the group of Angels do not enter a house wherein there is a dog or pictures. (Sahih Muslim Hadith no.3928)

In the light of these Ahaadith and other narrations it is not permissible to keep dogs as pets. The household is deprived of the Mercy of Allah Taãla.

While this is from Islamic Concern:

Religious traditions hold that if a dog - or woman - passes in front of you as you prepare to pray, it pollutes your purity and negates your prayer. Dogs are permissible as watchdogs or for other utilitarian purposes but not simply for companionship. Abou El Fadl says this zealous adherence to doctrine led one religious authority to advise a Muslim that his pet dog was evil and should be driven away by cutting off its food and water.

Hasan Küçük, a city councillor for the Islam Democrats in The Hague, the Netherland’s third city, even proposed that the city banned all dogs, promptly rebuked by Paul ter Linden, the councillor for Geert Wilders’ PVV party, who told him: “In this country pet ownership is legal. Whoever disagrees with this should move to another country.”

What is interesting is the reaction – or rather lack thereof – of the animal rights movement, too afraid, if it means touching Islamic sensitivities, to speak up even for animals.

The Dutch Party for the Animals started the controversy by proposing to make The Hague more dog friendly, meeting the strong opposition of Küçük, who in response called for dog ownership in The Hague to be criminalized.

The Dutch Party for the Animals, with 2 of the 150 seats in Holland’s House of Representatives, 1 of the 75 seats in the Senate and other 20 seats in provincial and local councils, is the most successful party of its kind in the world. If you search “Islam” on its site, you find the word only in reference to Geert Wilders or his PVV party, to castigate them for “unnecessarily” upsetting Muslims.

“Halal”, “Muslim” and “Islam” do not appear at all on the site of its British equivalent, the Animal Welfare Party (AWP), that describes itself as “The UK Political Party for People, Animals and the Environment” but is all these things, we should add, only when it does not offend Muslims.

Even considering only the two areas of halal and treatment of dogs, there is plenty to keep a true political party or association for animal rights well occupied with the problems and threats that Islam generates for creatures. But clearly this does not happen.

A Google search I made on the Animal Welfare Party’s website in 2010 did return a result for “Islam”. The site’s only reference to Islam was on a page, which has now been removed, commenting on the outcome of the Dutch general election held in June that year.

The AWP people were “obviously shocked by the PVV victory” but congratulated the voters because they showed to be

fed up with Christian politcs [sic] which only focused on protection of short-term human interests ahead of nature and the environment.

A coalition will be difficult, and fingers crossed it won’t be a coalition of VVD (right wing liberals), PVV (anti-islam party for freedom) and CDA (Christian Democrats) but rather a centrist (with Green Left) coalition.

It appeared that for the AWP (which was then called “Animals Count”), being anti-Islam was a no-no, but being anti-Christianity was perfectly kosher.

They were more shocked by the victory of the “anti-islam party for freedom” (which is not its name, anyway, its English translation being “Party for Freedom”) than by the way Muslims treat animals in Holland.

The problem here is that both the UK and the Dutch animal parties have a problem in deciding - or maybe have already wrongly decided - who their enemies and allies are.

It all depends on what their goals are.

If their goal is political correctness, their friends are the Muslims (including Hasan Küçük, the Turkish-Dutch representative on The Hague city council calling for a ban on all the city's dogs) and their enemies are the PVV.

If their goal is improving the animals' condition, then the exact reverse is the case: not only Küçük opposed the Party for the Animals' proposal to make The Hague more dog friendly by calling instead for the dogs' extermination (I wonder how else he could have banned them) or at least removal from their homes and human companions, but Paul ter Linden of the PVV told him what the Animals’ Party should have told him: here in Holland we love dogs and, if you don’t like it, leave.

He was the only one who defended the dogs, the only one who had the courage to stand up to the Muslims without fear of being called "Islamophobe".

In substance, the Dutch self-proclaimed Party for the Animals supports the enemies of animals and attacks the protectors of animals.

I think that we'll see more and more of these cases, in the Netherlands and elsewhere. Then we'll see where the "animal defenders" will really stand, if they consider their Leftist ideology more important than the animals' well-being or not.

Just in the same way as European police, social services, school teachers and even parents are prepared to throw children under the bus, so animal rights people are ready to sacrifice animals: not being considered racist or Islamophobic is more important for all of them.

That this is the case is obvious from the way groups for animal welfare are – and want to remain - blissfully ignorant of what Islam is, the threat that its growth poses to the West and in particular the danger that Islamization represents for animals.

There’s hardly any point in fighting for the advancement in the status of animals in law and public conscience when in a few decades our countries will regress to being dominated by a 7th-century cult replete with superstitions about black dogs and whose “religious” festivals are celebrated by slaughtering millions of fully-conscious animals in front of children who will quickly learn how to use a butcher’s knife.