In This Article
30-Second Summary
Headline Link: ‘Islamic Group Backs Service Dog Owner Threatened by Muslim Students’
Background: Islam and dogs
Opinion & Analysis: ‘Muslim Group Supports Student’s Right to Service Dog’
Reference: FindingDulcinea’s Web Guide to Islam; Council on American-Islamic Relations
Related Topic: ‘Turkey Seeks to Modernize Islamic Texts’
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Outreach Groups Promote Understanding After Muslim Student Threatens Service Dog
May 16, 2008 8:00 AM
by
Anne Szustek
Islamic groups are backing a Minnesota college student whose dog was threatened by a Muslim student, and are using the incident to start cross-cultural dialogue.
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St. Cloud State University student Tyler Hurd withdrew from his student-teaching responsibilites in April after a Muslim Somali student threatened to kill Hurd’s black Labrador while Hurd was teaching at St. Cloud Tech High School. Hurd needs the dog for guidance during his seizures, which stem from a childhood injury.
Islam encourages the use of dogs for protection and hunting but frowns upon keeping dogs as pets in the Western sense, leaving some observant Muslims in America at a cultural impasse.
Contact with dog saliva requires Muslims to perform ritual ablutions, and a story narrated in the Hadith, or ways of Prophet Muhammad, has led to the Islamic belief that angels will not enter a home where dogs are present.
Dr. Ayoub Banderker, while pointing out Muslims are commanded to treat dogs with the utmost compassion, writes on Web site Islamic Concern that it is “haram,” or forbidden, to keep dogs in small cages or on a tether for long periods outside.
Such cultural mores have played a part in Istanbul’s stray dog population. In 1996 there were an estimated 150,000 dogs roaming within the Turkish city’s limits. Family dogs are often left out in yards without leashes and some consider the keeping of pets to be “unnatural.”
Yet Muslim groups are quick to point out that Muhammad used dogs as guardians, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the threats against Hurd’s dog. “The moral and legal need to accommodate individuals using service dogs far outweighs the discomfort an individual Muslim might feel about coming into contact with a dog, which is one of God's creatures," said Valerie Shirley, communications director for Minnesota’s branch of CAIR.
Islam encourages the use of dogs for protection and hunting but frowns upon keeping dogs as pets in the Western sense, leaving some observant Muslims in America at a cultural impasse.
Contact with dog saliva requires Muslims to perform ritual ablutions, and a story narrated in the Hadith, or ways of Prophet Muhammad, has led to the Islamic belief that angels will not enter a home where dogs are present.
Dr. Ayoub Banderker, while pointing out Muslims are commanded to treat dogs with the utmost compassion, writes on Web site Islamic Concern that it is “haram,” or forbidden, to keep dogs in small cages or on a tether for long periods outside.
Such cultural mores have played a part in Istanbul’s stray dog population. In 1996 there were an estimated 150,000 dogs roaming within the Turkish city’s limits. Family dogs are often left out in yards without leashes and some consider the keeping of pets to be “unnatural.”
Yet Muslim groups are quick to point out that Muhammad used dogs as guardians, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the threats against Hurd’s dog. “The moral and legal need to accommodate individuals using service dogs far outweighs the discomfort an individual Muslim might feel about coming into contact with a dog, which is one of God's creatures," said Valerie Shirley, communications director for Minnesota’s branch of CAIR.
Headline Link: ‘Islamic Group Backs Service Dog Owner Threatened by Muslim Students’
The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune reports that “in 2007, a similar conflict occurred among Twin Cities cabdrivers and passengers with guide dogs. After the CAIR intervened, the drivers offered free rides to attendees of the American Council of the Blind Convention in Minneapolis.”
Source: Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune (free registration may be required)
Background: Islam and dogs
Dr. Ayoub Banderker, a veterinarian who is Muslim, writes that Islam does not forbid owning dogs, but “it is unhygienic to keep a dog in the house.” Contact with canine saliva requires Muslims to perform ritual washing of that part of the body and any clothes that may have been touched. Islam also forbids keeping dogs on leashes for extended periods of time or in cages. Ayoub reiterates that putting down dogs in the name of Islam is a sin and that the Prophet Muhammad commands the faithful to be kind to animals.
Source: Islamic Concern
Albalagh, an Islamic apologetics Web site, quotes a line of Hadith stating that “Angels do not enter a house wherein there is a dog or an animate picture,” relating a story in which the angel Gabriel told Muhammad that he did not enter the prophet’s home because there was a puppy under his bed.
Source: Albalagh
As of 1996, there were an estimated 150,000 stray dogs roaming the Istanbul Municipality. Because of local cultural beliefs, many family dogs are kept outside the house, allowing strays to reproduce and spread rabies. The Istanbul branch of the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture implemented a project in which antirabies serums were injected into köfte, a type of grilled meatball, then distributed to areas where stray dogs were known to congregate.
Source: Turkish Daily News
Opinion & Analysis: ‘Muslim Group Supports Student’s Right to Service Dog’
Engage Minnesota, a blog whose mission statement is “to give voice” to the state’s Muslim community, points out that many Muslims use seeing eye dogs and that there are several “Hadith, in which individuals are rewarded by God for protecting animals and punished for mistreating them.” The blog also mentions a 2007 scuffle in which there was a cultural misunderstanding between Muslim cab drivers in the Twin Cities who refused to take passengers who had dogs, were drunk, or who were carrying alcohol.
Source: Engage Minnesota
Reference: FindingDulcinea’s Web Guide to Islam; Council on American-Islamic Relations
FindingDulcinea’s Web Guide to Islam provides an outline of the faith, including background links, sites to online interpretations of holy texts, directories to mosques and calculators for local prayer times.
Source: findingDulcinea
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, founded in 1994, is an advocacy group for American Muslims and has the stated goals of “enhancing understanding of Islam, promoting justice and empowering American Muslims.”
Source: Council on American-Islamic Relations
Related Topic: ‘Turkey Seeks to Modernize Islamic Texts’
Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs has asked a team of scholars to update portions of the Hadith, Islam’s second-most sacred text after the Quran.
Source: findingDulcinea
© 2008 Dulcinea Media, Inc.
