A WHILE back I was about to blog about burqas for dogs, having stumbled on a report that that quoted a Muslim sociologist, Omar Jahal, as saying:

Muslim men got upset watching male dogs sniffing females and then mounting them in public. They found it indecent. Dog burqas – [barkas] – nip that in the bud.

Given that just about everything Islamic is utterly insane, it seemed plausible that a canine cover-up had been proposed – until the name Mohammed Qootip leapt from the page. The “moderate student” who owns a female collie, said:

It makes us look ridiculous. Also, it makes it difficult to recognise our dogs. And half the time they end up soiling the burqa. It’s a mess.

I was reminded of that satirical piece today after reading that Hasan Küçük, a Turkish-Dutch representative for the Islam Democrats, called for a ban on dogs in The Hague, the third-largest city in the Netherlands.

The Hague city council member’s call for a ban followed a proposal by the Party for the Animals (Partij voor de Dieren) to make the city more dog friendly.

Küçük was not best pleased, and counter-argued that keeping dogs as pets is tantamount to animal abuse and he then called for the possession of dogs in The Hague to be criminalised.

Paul ter Linden, who represents the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) on The Hague city council, responded to Küçük by saying:

In this country pet ownership is legal. Whoever disagrees with this should move to another country.



In 2010 a senior Iranian cleric decreed that dogs are “unclean” and should not be kept as pets — a move aimed at discouraging western-style dog ownership in the Islamic state.

According to this report, dogs are considered “unclean” under Islamic tradition but some people do keep them as pets in Iran. By issuing a fatwa Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi sent a clear message this trend must stop. He said:

Friendship with dogs is a blind imitation of the West. There are lots of people in the West who love their dogs more than their wives and children.

Guard dogs and sheep dogs are considered acceptable under Islamic law, but Iranians who carry dogs in their cars or take them to public parks can be stopped by police and fined.

The Koran does not explicitly prohibit contact with dogs, Shirazi said, but Islamic tradition showed it to be so.

We have lots of narrations in Islam that say dogs are unclean.

Hat tip: Remigius