Why are Dogs Haram in Islam?

If you are wondering why dogs are haram in Islam, then I have news for you. They aren't.

The Quran says nothing about dogs and the hadith give conflicting messages on dogs.

The only ones saying anything about dogs are the scholars. The fuqaha.

It is the scholars who have created these rules on dogs and it is these rules that have now warped into an illogical disliking for dogs by Muslims from Morocco to Malaysia.

If you have read my blog before you'll know it was the whole issue of dogs that exposed me to some of the hidden truths about Islam such as the hadith and the chains of narration.

Although my interests lie in other areas of critique such as history, the sharia rulings over dogs still fascinate me.

The more I read and delve into it, the more I realise how much of Islam was essentially made up by men hundreds of years after Muhammad. Most of what Muslims believe, think and do comes from these people. People - not God or the Prophet, just people. 

Ibn Rushd (Averoes) and Dogs in Islam

So it was with really interesting to stumble across a small passage in the work on Ibn Rushd on the disagreements between the Sunni schools of law over the cleanliness of left over water in a vessel which has been drunk by animals.

"The Distinguished Jurist's Primer" is essentially a book which discusses how opinions were formed by the different schools of thought (madhabs); in particular explaining how each madhab essentially had its own approach to the sharia (and its sources) and how these had to be adhered to, even in the face of logic. He nicely goes through how the differing opinions were formed and what the points of contention were between jurists.

As a side note, the book is also useful in highlighting the very fractured nature of the sharia - it is amazing how much disagreement there was over the most mundane things.

Is the leftover water of dogs clean? Here are some of the more salient points which touch upon the cleanliness of dogs.

1) Jurists all agreed over the cleanliness of water left over by Muslims and cattle "but disagreed EXTENSIVELY about other categories." Basically this illustrates how early scholars were all grabbing at straws in trying to adhere to their school's legal system and trying to make sense out of the religion presented to them.

 2) Some jurists upheld that that the leftover water of every animal was pure, while others made an exception for pigs. (Note: no exception for dogs, meaning the water would not be considered unclean! Not what you'd expect right?)

3) Imam Shafi'i however did make an exception for both dogs and pigs.

4) A main point of argument for most scholars at that time was that the permissibly of drinking the leftover water of an animal depended on whether you could eat its flesh, or not. So as you can eat acow, horse, etc. their leftover water  would be pure. Pig on the other hand can not be eaten, so their leftover water would be impure.

5) Many scholars also believed idolaters' leftover water was also impure.

6) Ibn Rushd highlights three key areas where the scholars disagreed:

a) Conflicts between analogies made by jurists and the Quran
b) Conflicts in the literal meanings of hadith
c) Conflicts between the hadith themselves

Here are some examples....

7) Scholars agreed that purity comes from life; therefore they had to also agree and believe that every living thing is pure. As a result, logically, the leftover water of anything pure is pure. But this contradicts the Quran doesn't it? "Swine flesh - for that verily is foul." So how can this be? Well, the jurists had to agree that this is a special case and that pigs therefore are the exception to the rule. Not all jurists agreed though as many saw the implications of this to logical path - they disagreed and explained the Quran was only being derogatory when talking of its flesh, not literally. Another example of this disagreement is in how jurists interpreted the Quran when it talks of, "the idolaters are unclean." Some took it literally, others just as a verbal slight on polytheists.

8) However, the problems don't end with the Quran as jurists then had the hadith body to deal with. They had Abu Hurayra's hadith about a dog licking a vessel and washing it seven times to interpret. On top of that they also had another equally sound hadith through Abu Hurayra (from Qurra through Ibn Sirin) that said, "The purification of a utensil when a cat has licked it is to wash it once or twice." (Why is it we NEVER hear this hadith?) So now on top of the pig, the scholars are being told by hadith that both dogs and cats may also be issues. But this totally contradicts the principle that all the scholars had agreed on that living things are pure doesn't it?

So now we start to see the mental gymnastics from the scholars on this whole question.

9) Imam Malik held the opinion that the leftover water of a dog was to be spilled and the vessel washed "as it is a ritual act of non-rational worship." Do you see what he has done? He can't explain it so it becomes non-rational act of worship! Basically, just do it because.

10) As Imam Malik had to follow this bizarre logic he laid down he also had to rule that one only had to spill water that was leftover in a vessel - not food! So basically if a dog licks water it's bad but if they lick food its ok. This makes no sense people. He admitted himself that he had to take this position as otherwise it would contradict the Quran in several ways including the verse, "So eat of what they catch for you." Basically these scholars were forcing themselves into positions - it's utter madness.


11) Imam Shafi'i went with the opinion that the dog was an exception and took the literal understanding that the leftovers were impure. He stated the uncleanliness lies in the saliva (but again this contradicts reason, logic and hadith) not the dog.

12)  There were jurists who also ruled that the leftover water of  cats is impure. Others though took a hadith about cats being clean because they 'moved among people' as proof that there was no problem with cats. Rightfully so, many scholars claimed this was nonsense because dogs also 'moved among people'. In the end jurists came to settle this point by deciding to give more precedence to one narrator of hadith over another! It was that simple - if the hadith contradicted each other, just choose the one that suits your stance!

13) At the end of this section Ibn Rushd perhaps unwittingly gives us a glimpse into the origins of the hadith over dogs and licking where he explains that his Grandfather, also a jurist, ruled that the hadith must have a logical reason and that reason is most probably related to preventing the spread of a disease, i.e. rabies, not to the impurity of the water or the animal. "If we say that this water is not unclean, it is better to provide a rational underlying reason rather than saying that it is non-rational when water in itself is clean."

Why I left Islam.

You see, I did not leave Islam because of dogs. I left Islam because I realised Islam is a con. It's been made up as it went along and a lot of what we are taught to be "Islam" is really what scholars and those in power decided it was.

This is just one point - dogs. You can take my approach to literally anything in Islam and you'll pretty much always end up in the same place - scholars coming to an agreement over something using Quran and hadith and whatever else they needed at the time to suit their cause. I did the same with the rules on apostasy and found the same - it was all made up later!

Sorry, but no creator of this planet, the moon and the stars would send us a religion that ties intelligent people up in knots over whether the leftover water of dogs is clean or not. This is a crazy waste of time not a path to God.