Dog prisons in Iran
“Friendship with dogs is a blind imitation of the West”
A senior Iranian cleric has decreed dogs are “unclean” and should not be kept as pets in a move aimed at discouraging western-style dog ownership in the Islamic state, a newspaper reported Saturday. Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi has sent a clear message to his people with a fatwa ruling that this trend must stop.
“There are lots of people in the West who love their dogs more than their wives and children.”
Although the Qur’an does not explicitly prohibit contact with dogs, Shirazi says Islamic tradition has showed it to be so, “We have lots of narrations in Islam that say dogs are unclean.” Even guard dogs and sheep dogs are not beyond the law; people carrying dogs in public are liable to stopped and fined.
The Calgary Herald reports: The interpretation of religious rules on personal conduct is a constant source of debate and potential conflict in Iran, which has been an Islamic republic since a revolution ousted the Western-backed Shah in 1979.
In a television interview last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad weighed in on the issue of the Islamic dress code, saying women who fail to cover their hair completely should not be harassed by the police.
Morality police are conducting their annual crackdown. Ahmadinejad’s surprisingly liberal view was condemned by fellow hardliner politicians and senior clerics.
The Radio Free Europe Liberty reports:
All detained pets are taken to a newly created detention center. Radio Farda reports that some dogs are housed amid piles of garbage and debris. Others reported that a very large dog was confined to a cramped cage within the dog “prison.”
Dr. Javid Aledavud, the head of Iran’s Society to Defend the Rights of Animals, told Radio Farda that conditions at the center are very poor and unsuitable for pets. He says there are no passages in the Koran about dogs being dirty.
He adds that sniffer dogs are being used in Iran in the fight against drug trafficking. Iranian security forces say the ban against walking dogs in public is meant strictly to fight Western influences.
Reza Javalchi, the secretary of the Society to Defend the Rights of Animals, says dog ownership, more common in the West, is considered by Iranian officials to be a sign of Western influence. “But that is not the case,” he said. “If we want to speak about symbols of Western civilization then maybe wearing a suit is also Western. These are issues that have become part of human life. Based on our research, domestic dogs were kept in Iran for hunting and guarding maybe long before it became widespread in the West.”