The law, named [Protection of the Public’s Rights Against Animals], was proposed by 75 hardliner legislators and introduced in November, described people living with animals as a “destructive social problem,” and bans “importing, raising, assisting in the breeding of, breeding, buying or selling, transporting, driving or walking, and keeping in the home wild, exotic, harmful and dangerous animals,” according to [AFP]. However, the definition of “harmful and dangerous animals” does not strictly cover animals typically deemed as such. According to the AFP, the ban would affect “crocodiles, turtles, snakes, lizards, cats, mice, rabbits, dogs and other unclean animals as well as monkeys.”
I was under the impression Cats are revered in Islam and that neglect of cats is even said to be a sin in the Quran. So how does forcing people to get rid of their cats gel with centuries of Islamic tradition?
I am not a Muslim, but my Google-Fu informs me that cats are not mentioned in the Quran. According to the hadith, cats are not impure and one’s state of ritual cleanliness is not nullified by having contact with them, and it is sinful to keep a cat locked up without food and water or the ability to hunt. There is also some folklore that Muhammed kept a pet cat and once cut away part of his robe that she was sleeping on so he could arise without waking her, and there appears to be a belief that cats will not walk on or over a Quran even if lead with string or bait.
Based on that, I don’t necessarily think it would be impossible to argue that keeping a cat as a pet is not incompatible with cats being clean animals. I did encounter a statement to the effect that exchanging money for a cat is forbidden, which could possibly feed into the “treating animals as family members is decadent” mentality the hardliners seem to be going for.
That being said, I certainly hope they don’t get their way.
I’d be a bit skeptical of anyone’s interpretation of anything Iranian. Did any Iranian officials specifically call for a ban on cats? Or is this just bait calling for outrage?
This article (posted on “France 24” but originally from Agence France-Presse) implies that the ban is a law that is under consideration in Iran’s parliament:
Agence France-Presse is, as far as I know, pretty reliable.
And the question about the reliability of the story could have been shortcut if the OP had included the source of their quote. That would seem to be a good standard to follow in Factual Questions.
An Islamic scholar can then reason about the purity of the saliva of domestic cats from this. But this subject seems to have little to do with laws about keeping wild animals.
While buying a load of cat food at the grocery store the cashier remarked that as a Muslim he couldn’t have a cat because they licked themselves, but he could have a dog because it was OK if it protected his apartment.
There’s a wikipedia article, Islam and cats - Wikipedia, that says
“In Islamic tradition, cats are admired for their cleanliness. They are thought to be ritually clean, and are thus allowed to enter homes[1] and even mosques, including Masjid al-Haram. Food sampled by cats is considered halal, in the sense that their consumption of the food does not make it impermissible for Muslims to eat, and water from which cats have drunk is permitted for wudu (the ablution that is done by Muslims)”
In my experience, the concept of “feral cat” doesn’t really exist in the Middle East. Cats are cats. Some cats have human enablers, some don’t.
Cats were never really domesticated, or more precisely, they were domesticated at the species level, not at the individual level. They live with us in our settlements, and some of them live with us in our homes, but the latter have never been the majority.