The Case of Dogs

Epigraph:

Qur’an (5:3): “They ask you what is lawful for them. Say: All pure things are lawful to you as well as the hunting animals* you have taught to hunt, training them from the knowledge God has taught you, [the animal hunted by them is also allowed.] So, eat of what they catch for you and [before you let loose the animal to catch the prey,] pronounce upon it the name of God. And remain fearful of God. Indeed, swift is God in taking account.”

*[It refers to animals trained for hunting regardless of whether they are beasts or birds.]

Qur’an (18:18): “[Had you seen them,] you would have thought that they are awake even though they were asleep. We had continued to turn them on their right and left, and their dog sat at the cave entrance with hands outstretched. Had you caught their glimpse, you would have turned and fled and you would have been awe-struck by them.”

Comments: Here, we are talking about the concept of impurity. There is, on the one hand, a notion of impurity in which we naturally regard something as unpleasant or undesirable. If some filth gets onto my body, for example, what does my natural instinct tell me about it? I instinctively regard it as something unpleasant. In that sense, it is quite natural. 

Something similar may apply in the case of dogs. Dogs can carry diseases, and there is generally a concern about the possibility of infection. On one occasion, the Prophet ﷺ instructed people to wash a vessel if a dog had licked it. From this, the idea of impurity associated with dogs also seems to have developed.

But impurity is not necessarily an intrinsic quality of the animal itself. Such concerns can arise with other animals as well. In the particular case of dogs, however, people seem to have extended this analogy and applied it specifically to dogs.

Now, look at the position of dogs in the West and the way they have become part of people's lives as domestic pets. People keep them and care for them. The fact is that human beings have always kept animals as pets. If people choose to keep dogs, just as many people in our own society keep different kinds of animals, I do not think this should become a matter of condemnation or religious controversy. It is largely a matter of personal preference and individual taste.

As for the religious point, if a person keeps a dog today, would the angels of mercy will no longer enter his house? No. The point is that the statement actually found in the hadith is simply what it says. As for the nature of the angels of mercy, how they come, and in what manner Allah's mercy reaches people through them—if there were some definitive principle concerning this, the Qur'an would have told us, or the Messenger of Allah ﷺ would have explained it to us.

What we have here is an incident from which people have drawn a broader inference. After all, hunting dogs were also kept by people (mentioned in the Qur’an verse above). They were presumably kept in their homes or around their property. Surely this does not mean that such people or places were thereby deprived of Allah's mercy.

That is why the matter has not been stated in the absolute and general way in which it is commonly presented. The point is simply that, according to a narration, Archangel Gabriele expressed a reason for not entering the Prophet's ﷺ house: there was a dog there. From this particular incident, people have drawn certain conclusions.

But it is not the case that the Qur'an says, or that the hadith explicitly says, in the broad sense in which it is sometimes presented: “Do not keep a dog, otherwise the angels of mercy will not enter your home.”

That particular formulation is not what the Qur'an says, nor is it the wording of the hadith. The hadith reports that Archangel Gabriele said that he—and, in the wording of the narration, the angels—would not enter a house in which there was a dog or an image. The broader conclusions that people draw from this report are an interpretation of that incident.

Another Hadith states that if a dog drinks from the utensil of any one of you, then it is essential to wash it seven times. This has a particular context since dogs carry some contagious diseases with them at times so the Prophet remarked about this.

 

Aamir Yazdani
MPhil (Islamic Thought & Civilization), Pakistan
MSc (Irrigation Engineering), UK