Our Canine Heroes and Islamic Dogophobia

Kalb, or dog, is one of the worst possible insults in the Muslim world. Call a man Kalb or Kalb ibn Kalb, if you want the knives to come out. In Afghanistan, those who fled the Taliban and returned to help the Coalition rebuild the country are called "Sag shouey" or "Dog washers" since Americans are infidel dogs and the Afghans who cooperate with Americans are menial servants of the dogs. Mohammed, in addition to his affinity for pre-teen girls also had a compulsive hatred of dogs. Some Hadiths quote him ordering the killing of all dogs, others show him to be moderate ordering that only "'black dogs" be killed. Which gives a special edge to the not uncommon description in the Muslim world of Obama as a "black dog".

After Osama bin Laden's execution, an imam of the Al-Aqsa mosque castigated the "Western dogs" who had done it. And as it turned out a dog actually did accompany the SEAL team that took down Osama. Unlike the billions spent on trying to win over Pakistanis and Afghans, who went on aiding terrorists anyway-- the dogs remained true and loyal friends. On September 11th, among the first responders were our four footed friends who risked their lives clambering around the smoking rubble in search of survivors. Muslims believe that an angel cannot enter a home when a dog is inside. But after the Muslims had killed thousands of Americans, it was the dogs who acted as the angels finding the bodies where they could and helping give the families of the dead something to bury.

When Muslims plot terrorist attacks, it is the bomb sniffing dogs who serve as the front line of defense against them. Military dogs walk the front lines searching out Taliban explosives and have become primary targets of enemy snipers. At airports, we would do much better to fire the TSA's gropers and luggage thieves, and dump the naked scanners, and replace them with dogs. The enemy may fool our politicians, our clergy and our law enforcement-- but they will never fool a dog. Back in Israel, my parents found a puppy that had fallen into the hands of Muslim youths who tortured and abused it. That puppy grew into a wise and intelligent animal that went into a rage at the sight of one of its tormentors. No matter how they dressed or how well they spoke, people could be fooled, but she could never be fooled. On a bus passengers would sometimes take issue with the fury that poured out of her when scenting a member of a creed whose holy books say, "Allah's Apostle ordered that the dogs should be killed". When the rash of bus bombings began, carried out by terrorists who occasionally disguised themselves as Israelis, that canine scrutiny and anger would have been invaluable. How can a dog tell the difference between a Muslim and a non-Muslim even when there are no racial or ethnic differences? There may be no physical differences, but there are moral ones. It may be the casual cruelty that Islam inculcates in its followers that is as visible in the body language and attitude to a sensitive animal-- as a gun is to an airport metal detector. In Iran, visitors tell of dogs who could distinguish between Zoroastrians and Muslims; "In Sharifabad the dogs distinguished clearly between Moslem and Zoroastrian, and were prepared to go...full of hope, into a crowded Zoroastrian assembly, or to fall asleep trustfully in a Zoroastrian lane, but would flee as before Satan from a group of Moslem boys."

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the dog is still a particular object of Muslim hatred

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the dog is still a particular object of Muslim hatred. In Tehran an Islamic judge sentenced a 70 year old man to four months in jail and thirty lashes for walking his dog. And the parliament is once again tackling a law to outlaw dogs for posing a "cultural problem". This particular "cultural problem" has been exported with Islamic immigration as cabbies deny rides to the blind because their seeing eye dogs will keep angels out of their cabs. Blind passengers have been thrown off public buses by Muslim bus drivers and disabled people in all walks of life have faced harassment due to Islamic 'Dogophobia' which translates easily into bigotry against disabled people. The "cultural problem" doesn't begin or end with dogs. One Hadith states; "When one of you prays without a sutrah, a dog, an ass, a pig, a Jew, a Magian, and a woman cut off his prayer." Along with Dogophobia, the teachings of Islam also cultivate Anti-Semitism and Sexism. All far more serious problems than the constant defensive refrain of Islamophobia taken up by Muslim groups and their media panderers. It is not the dogs alone who are treated this way in Afghanistan or the rest of the Muslim world. Casual mutilation and killing are suffered by women who have acid thrown in their faces, whose noses are cut off and whose murders often go unpunished. The same could be said of Jews, until the majority of the Jewish populations of the Muslim world fled to Israel, America and Europe-- only to be followed there by the same warped culture of cruelty which says that Allah listens to the prayers of murderers and rapists-- but not of dog owners. In Afghanistan, Muslim Dogophobia can actually be an advantage for the people who befriend dogs instead of trying to mutilate them because a seventh century pedophile claimed they were unclean. "Dogs can be used to pacify an unruly group of people--particularly in the Middle East," says one New York Times article, while avoiding specifying who that unruly group of people may be, and why they need pacifying. An Air Force dog trainer is quoted as saying; "There is a cultural aversion to dogs in some of these countries, where few of them are used as pets. Dogs can be very intimidating in that situation." As can women, and people whom Muslims have an irrational hatred toward. The Times was outraged that Guantanamo Bay female interrogators had impinged on the "religious sensitivities" of Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorists who routinely murdered and tortured women. Had someone thought to bring in female Jewish dog owners, waterboarding wouldn't have even been needed. In the UK, Muslims have gotten themselves exempted from contact with bomb sniffing dogs on religious grounds-- if they can only find a reason why metal detectors are also against their religion, then the sky is theirs. But in Israel, the Zionist war criminals have begun deploying security pigs who have a nose for truffles and terrorists. While they may lack the same level of discrimination as dogs, a Gaza Ghazi who sees a furious wild boar racing toward him will think his worst nightmares have come true. If there was only some way to work in chess, kite flying and Rushdie novels into that scenario-- his doom would be complete. In Afghanistan, dogs know to escape their "cultural problem" by taking refuge with Western soldiers. In Kandahar, former home of Osama bin Laden, one dog was beaten by a crowd, stabbed in the chest, had his ears cut off and thrown under a car-- until he was rescued by British and Aussie soldiers. The article states that many of the locals "despise dogs only marginally less than they do coalition soldiers", but that dog's "refusal to submit became legendary" around the base. There is something to be learned from a creature who refuses to submit to the violence of a creed that calls for his death. A Muslim is literally one who submits and a Dhimmi is one who submits to a Muslim. We who do not bow to Allah or to Muslims can learn from the resilience of a simple animal in the face of evil. In early 1956, a Nepalese traveler in New Delhi lost his dog whom he had innocently named Mohammed. "Lost, from the Hindustan Hotel, one fox breed dog, brown color, long hair, answers to name Muhammad." Local Muslims greeted the ad with the usual level of tolerance and restraint they are well known for. Thousands of them gathered in the streets, the newspaper apologized for the ad and the owner was arrested for insulting Mohammed, not the dog, but the man. Yet is it Mohammed who should be insulted for being associated with a dog, or the dog who should be insulted for being associated with a mass murderer, rapist and pedophile? A dog is loyal, Mohammed betrayed those who trusted him to keep his word. A dog learns the rules and follows them, Mohammed invented his laws and violated them whenever he saw something he wanted-- such as his son's wife. But most of all a dog loves honestly and truly. Islam teaches its followers the violent cruelty of the animal, but suppresses the natural affection, the sense of joy that living things are meant to have. "There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam," Khomeini said. Additionally there is no mercy, no tolerance, no trust, no faith, no honor, no decency and nothing but deceit and death. There is no room in it for the simple virtues of a dog or the higher virtues of a man. From the dogs who walk the front lines in Afghanistan to the rescue dogs who took the lead at Ground Zero, to the animals who are tortured and murdered every day in the Muslim world-- we can learn courage, loyalty and friendship. While the media insists on telling us how much we can learn from Islam-- there is more of goodness, decency and honor to be learned from a dog, than there is from the entire Koran.

Daniel Greenfield——Bio and Archives Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.