Iran cracks down on - pet dogs

Ayatollah fun from AFP:

Iran is again cracking down on people with pet dogs, viewed as unclean in Islam, but Soroush
Mobaraki says sales are booming despite fears the pooches might be arrested and their owners fined.

This veterinary pharmacologist, sitting in the small Tehran pet shop he owns, said there has been a sharp increase in demand for dogs in recent years.

We sell 15 to 20 dogs a month, but I know some other traders who sell many more, said Mobaraki, aged 34.

For decades, keeping dogs as pets was a rarity and thus tolerated in Iran, where the Islamic beliefs cherished by the vast majority of traditional Iranians consider dogs as najis, or unclean.

Guard dogs, sheep dogs and hounds have always been acceptable, but the soaring number of pets acquired by a middle class keen to imitate Western culture has alarmed the authorities in recent years.

They have now criminalized walking dogs in public, or driving them around the city.

Reports of lap dogs dressed in Western designer clothes and accessories being driven in fancy cars, or walked in parks in affluent Tehran neighborhoods has drawn the ire of hardline clerics.

In June 2010 Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirzi labeled dog companionship as a blind imitation of Western culture, warning that such behavior would lead to family corruption and damage societal values.

Many people in the West love their dogs more than their wives and children; the ayatollah was quoted in the media as saying.

Those remarks, and a decree issued by Shirzi, gave ground to the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance forbidding all media from publishing any advertisements about pets.

The restrictions, implemented in 2010, forced many breeders to keep their dogs out of sight.

We are not allowed to keep them in pet shops, said Mobaraki, who spoke of his safe haven in a garden outside Tehran. I only bring them here when I have struck a deal in advance with the buyer.

The popularity of this un-Islamic trend has also forced the police to reinforce its sporadic crackdown on dogs.

Police will confront those who walk their dogs in the streets. Cars carrying dogs will also be impounded, deputy police chief Ahmad Reza Radan said in April, according to the Fars news agency.