The Latest Enemies of Iran: Dogs and Their Owners

From TIME

An Iranian woman holding a dog stands in front of a bank in Tehran

Morteza Nikoubazl / Reuters / Corbis

For much of the past decade, the Iranian government has tolerated what it considers a particularly depraved and un-Islamic vice: the keeping of pet dogs.

During periodic crackdowns, police have confiscated dogs from their owners right off the street; and state media has lectured Iranians on the diseases spread by canines. The cleric Gholamreza Hassani, from the city of Urmia, has been satirized for his sermons railing against “short-legged” and “holdable” dogs. But as with the policing of many other practices (like imbibing alcoholic drinks) that are deemed impure by the mullahs but perfectly fine to many Iranians, the state has eventually relaxed and let dog lovers be.
Those days of tacit acceptance may soon be over, however. Lawmakers in Tehran have recently proposed a bill in parliament that would criminalize dog ownership, formally enshrining its punishment within the country’s Islamic penal code. The bill warns that that in addition to posing public health hazards, the popularity of dog ownership “also poses a cultural problem, a blind imitation of the vulgar culture of the West.” The proposed legislation for the first time outlines specific punishments for “the walking and keeping” of “impure and dangerous animals,” a definition that could feasibly include cats but for the time being seems targeted at dogs. The law would see the offending animal confiscated, the leveling of a $100-to-$500 fine on the owner, but leaves the fate of confiscated dogs uncertain. “Considering the several thousand dogs [that are kept] in Tehran alone, the problem arises as to what is going to happen to these animals,” Hooman Malekpour, a veterinarian in Tehran, said to the BBC’s Persian service. If passed, the law would ultimately energize police and volunteer militias to enforce the ban systematically.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

13 Replies to “The Latest Enemies of Iran: Dogs and Their Owners”

  1. Imagine if someone came and shot your dog. Imagine the rage you would feel as you meekly let them take your dog and shoot it, and imagine the shame you would feel about not being able to protect your beloved friend the way it would protect you. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it. “I can do this to you and there is nothing you can do about it, because I am a big man and you are not.” The Iranians are going to have to kill these guys if they ever want to have lives; talking is not going to work. Dog killers must die!

  2. I would like to see one of these guys telling me they are going to harm my dog in any way. Even pat his fur against the grain. It would make the newspapers, but my dog wouldn’t need kibble for weeks.

  3. “Diseases spread by canines.”
    I’ve lived with dogs for most of my life, and I never caught a disease from them.
    Maybe Muslims are hypochondriacs, in addition to their many other faults.

  4. The ‘Diseases spread by pet dogs’ propaganda is increasingly being pushed in mainstream European media also these days. islamic rules for all. Wake up?

  5. Our arab masters also told us to drink camel piss which we follow as the sunna of the prophet. We are happy to be dog hating, camel piss drinking, peadophile promoting, death to america shouting types.

  6. Old guy it is the peadophile prophet that will bring down islam. Once people learn about his diddling aisha it is curtains for islam A good idea is to try and spread this meme just casually in conversation, and mention that in Saudi and Iran the marriage age is nine. Introduce it into a conversation about all the wonderful things that other countries do. The meme about the dogs is also good but because it can not be verified easily like marriage age you may get the usual shouts of racist. Still it is all part of the war. We need to spread as many memes as possible and I think the peadophile prophet one is the best.

  7. Way too many people are starting to believe that you can catch diseases from your pets, I had been wondering where they got that idea from, now I know.

  8. @Persian Slave

    Now I have to find out what a meme is. It’s quite complicated, I think.

  9. Meme: an idea by Richard Dawkins. Basically, it is a gene for minds. An idea that spreads from mind to mind altering behaviour in the process and making itself spread better as genes do. Religion, according to Dawkins, is a meme as followers of them tend to have more children and impart these memes to those children. Hence religion is highly adaptive in terms of its evolutionary value overall I would say. Can’t say if Dawkins would agree.

    I have tried to implant a few quasi memes into the popular consciousness. 1. The idea of calling conspicuously religious Muslims, ‘Mustards’ as in Mus-tards or Muslim retards. The reason is that it is critical we both accept who and what our enemy as free people are, and begin to degrade, humiliate and mock the enemy as we always have done for all of history. WW2 had some great propaganda against the Germans, Nazis and Japanese, all necessary to maintain a fighting attitude.

    Political correctness determines that we can mock our people, our culture, our icons especially but the enemy who flies our greatest inventions into our proudest achievements and call that a triumph must be treated as sacred. This has to be turned around. We have to start calling these qu’nts what they are. Primitive, hate filled, retrograde mustards.

  10. Oh, I’m beginning to see. I had that word mixed up with “urban legend”, or “lie” or something, but not quite. Oh, OK. So if I say, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” to somebody, and they go off to think about it, find they like it, then adopt it, then tell somebody else… I come back ten years later and the whole place is Christian, crosses everywhere – all caused by my one little line. So the Golden Rule is a “meme”.

  11. Did anyone see area 9? I think “prawns” is a great word for our little friends. How’s that for a meme?

  12. Yeah sort of. Read Richard Dawkins excellent book, ‘The Selfish Gene’ if you can, it explains it really well and is a fantastic read anyway. Prawns works for me. Prawns with Mustard!