So, it seems that in Jordan, a cleric's comments were taken as a fatwa to go out and kill dogs, which led to lots of people getting out to shoot up (or poison) stray dogs. It was all started by a girl dying of rabies after being bitten by a stray.
Not that big a story, perhaps,
except that the article in The Atlantic is interesting because of its discussion of the odd status of fatwas
per se in Islam:
But the peculiar thing about Jordan’s “holy war on dogs” is that it
doesn’t exist, according to Jordan’s Dar al-Iftaa, the institution that
issues religious rulings. The mufti’s words were never intended as a
command to kill, said Ahmad al-Hasanat, secretary general of Dar
al-Iftaa. “It is forbidden to kill dogs like this,” said al-Hasanat.
Contrary to portrayals of the fatwa as a brutal imperative to kill, the
original fatwa only allowed killing of a dog that is threatening one’s
life, al-Hasanat said. “If there are dogs living on the streets, no one
is saying to kill them.”
The potential issue with fatwas is not that they are strict religious
commands, but the opposite: They are non-binding religious opinions,
only sometimes put in writing, that are left open to the individual’s
interpretation and choice of whom he wants to obey. Typically given as
answers to individuals’ specific questions, fatwas are based on
deliberation and analysis by qualified religious scholars called muftis.
The difference between fatwas and court rulings is that no one is
obligated to follow a fatwa; it’s not a law, and ignoring it incurs no
penalty.
“Religious authority is not forced,” al-Hasanat said. “We
only give advice. If someone takes it, great. If not, what can we do? I
give him a fatwa, and he decides.”
As for the status of dogs in Islam, it seems all kind of confusing:
Dogs have long been considered unclean in most schools of Islamic law, said Berglund, who published a paper on the status of dogs in Islam. But there is no basis in the Koran or hadith
for mass killings of dogs—nor is there an imperative to do so in the
fatwa. The driving force behind Jordan’s dog shootings is not Islamic
government, it seems, but Jordanian people’s preexisting irritation with
an uncontrolled stray dog problem. In 2014, for example, local media reported
that residents were asking the municipality of Zarqa to get rid of
strays after dogs attacked an elderly woman and several children, but
that the officials refused, saying that killing dogs was forbidden and
against Islamic law.
“Probably a lot of people in Jordan are just
fed up with stray dogs. It’s a very human thing. You pick up this fatwa
to get rid of the dogs harassing your family and stealing food,”
Berglund said. “If this mufti had said it’s permissible to kill horses
or donkeys, people wouldn’t have started to kill horses or donkeys.
There are plenty of fatwas on helping the poor, too, but look how many
people do nothing for the poor.”
In this case, religion may be
serving people’s social aims, not the other way around. Whereas
foreigners assumed the “war on dogs” was coming from the demands of
strict religious authority, it may actually be the opposite: Jordan’s
religious flexibility has allowed space for dog-haters to use a fatwa as
an excuse to kill them.
Update: I'm going to be very even handed here, and raise the question of Jewish attitudes to dogs. If they aren't so keen on them either, it is just a Near East cultural thing that has spread further afield with both Islam and Judaism?
Interestingly, there are lots of articles on the 'net asking whether Jews generally like dogs, or not. The best article I've quickly read, so far, is perhaps
this one in The Tablet, which notes that the evidence is strong for at least an ambivalent attitude towards both dogs and cats. (I didn't realise before - while dogs get a mention here and there in the Bible, cats never do.) Here are some interesting paragraphs:
For the most part, and in spite of some recent scholarly attempts at
rehabilitation, dogs were held in contempt in Israelite society due to
their penchant for dining on blood and carcasses (I Kings 14:11; 16:4,
21:19, 24, and 22:38). They were regarded as urban predators roaming
about at night, barking and howling, in search for food (Psalms 59:7,
15), and such dogs could easily attack anybody who got too close (Psalms
22:17, 21) or bite those who foolishly tried to show them affection
(Proverbs 26:17). Outside of the city there were wild dogs, busy
devouring carrion and licking blood (II Kings 9:35-36; Exodus 22:30).
Very few people would have wanted anything to do with them. The only
hint of any positive role for the biblical dog is found in Job 30:1,
which makes reference to “dogs of my flock,” perhaps indicating that in
biblical times there were dogs who served as sheep dogs or herders.
The basically negative and at best ambivalent attitude of biblical
Israelites was not that different from prevalent attitudes in general in
the ancient Near East, which often stressed the impurity of the dog and
its contemptible status. True, there were exceptions to the rule; some
dogs did occasionally enjoy somewhat of a higher status, some Canaanite
cults may have sanctified canines, the Hittites liked to use them in
purification and healing rites, and the odd dog may actually have been
kept as a pet—and if it lived in Phoenician Ashkelon might have been
buried in the dog cemetery. However, these were exceptions to the
generally negative stereotypes that existed in both ancient Israel and
in neighboring lands.
Dogs fared a lot better in some other ancient cultures:
Greeks, Romans, and Persians loved dogs. Dogs were functional: They
served as hunting dogs, sheep dogs, and guard dogs. Dogs could pull
carts, and there were even performing dogs. Some dogs were said to be
able to heal with a lick of their tongues. They were popular pets and
companions for men and women of all ages: A “boy and his dog” and even a
“girl and her dog” were quite common, and many women had a small lap
dog as a pet. In Persia, dogs did all of the above-mentioned tasks and
were popular, but they were also revered, taking on the status given to
cats in Egypt—in part because the Persians mistakenly identified the
spiny hedgehog as a dog, and this animal was instrumental in ridding
houses of poisonous snakes.
Cats, not so much:
Cats were a lot less popular, although as mousers and enemies of
vermin they fulfilled an important function. Yet keeping them as pets
indoors or even in the barnyard could be problematic since, in addition
to mice, they had a tendency to attack or eat other pets in the home or
chickens or fowl in the barnyard. Not only were they not “guard” animals
like dogs, but it was often necessary to guard against their feral
nature, even when supposedly domesticated: They were necessary but not
loved. In Persia, though, they were khrafstra, noxious creatures, the same as the mice and the rats that they ate.
Interesting, I'm sure you'll agree.
