(UPDATED) Afghanistan is “a country where dogs are seen more as vermin than pets, and frequently harassed, tortured, killed or used for fighting,” writes Jessica McDiarmid in the Star, without explaining why the “country” feels that way: Because Islam does. Muslims consider dogs unclean. So of course Afghans harass, torture, and kill dogs, and use them for fighting, because Islam tells them to. The “country” didn’t spontaneously decide dogs were as vermin.
McDiarmid didn’t bother responding to my question as to why she didn’t make this fact clear. (UPDATE: Toronto Star public editor Kathy English failed to respond to my complaint about McDiarmid’s coverage.)
The good-news story is the rest of McDiarmid’s story: Non-Muslim Canadians are heroically, and expensively, rescuing the dogs Muslims hate.
Updates
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Confidential to Adam Greenfield: You’re not a gay male who loves dogs, so you should be careful lecturing us about how Muslims treat us. (They same Muslims who hate us hate Jews, too.)
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David Zucchino writes quite a smashing story in the L.A. Times about Nowzad, a British charity that rescues haram dogs (and some cats) from the Muslims who hate them. It costs a fortune and it’s worth every penny.
But I had to ask Zucchino the same question I asked McDiarmid: Don’t Afghans mistreat dogs because Islam tells them to? He at least answered me. “Point taken. However, Afghans reject dogs as pets for local cultural reasons” – I doubt that – “as well as for religious reasons. I just didn’t have the space in the story to go into them.”
- The Puppy Rescue Mission does something similar for U.S. soldiers.
Here’s why I give a shit
I value the rescue of actual abused animals over appeasement of religious fanatics who hate dogs and, while we’re on the subject, my people and quite possibly yours.