We have previously discussed violence and legal measures targeting dogs by some Muslims who view canines as “unclean.” Even postcards with dogs and service dogs (and here) have raised the ire of some Muslim groups. Now this issue is getting some long-needed attention in Iran after a short film that showed stray dogs being tortured and killed by having acid injected into them.
The video was taken an industrial area of Shiraz, 900 kilometres south of Tehran. The animal activists claimed that those responsible paid $4 for each dog. As with environmentalists in China, I have always had overwhelming respect and admiration for secularists and animal (particularly dog) advocates in Muslim countries. This is more than an impressive commitment to principle but putting your actual life on the line for those principles.
The good news is that the Iranian government is acting on the video. While there was an effort to criminalize the ownership of dogs under Sharia law (and subject dog owners to up to 74 lashed last year), Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar has called for an investigation into the video. While she referred rather mildly to the practice as “an immediate end to unconventional population control method[] for stray dogs,” she did call upon the interior ministry to “deal with the criminals responsible”.
Some Iranian celebrities like Ali Karimi, once a star on Iran’s national football team, posted a picture with his two dogs on Instagram and the message “Dogs are the kindest domestic animals. I hope those who, under any excuse, did this to these animals get what they deserve.”
More kindness displayed by our American soldiers — I mean, warriors, as properly referred to in our neo-fascist police state:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=621_1204615429
If you have people brought up on violent games, videos, movies, TV shows, fawning gun culture, disdain for the poor and then sent off to war to kill, and surrounded with media that screams for Americans to kill others, can we really be surprised that all the violence we U.S.ians cultivate come home? And what will these violent beings do in the course of what they consider life?
bam bam – I wonder what Old Nurse would have to say if she stood next to my father in Chop Chop Square in Saudi Arabia and watched the beheading of two gay men. Would she still think we were morally inferior? Or if she was in the boat of immigrants on their way to Europe from Libya, when Muslims murdered 12 Christians and threw their bodies into the sea, just because they were Christian.
This moral relativism is not a valid debate strategy.
We should not be afraid to face the wrongs in the world. If we can’t even talk about them, or define them, how can we fight it?
Isaac:
“Weak gun laws in most states mean that virtually anyone can openly carry loaded weapons without any permits, training or background checks. I just sent a message thanking Safeway for their policy that asks customers to leave their guns at home. It’s a common-sense policy that will make all shoppers and families safer.”
#1 Mass murderers ALWAYS choose soft targets. Hanging a sign proclaiming that everyone inside is unarmed, especially in a high carry state, is like a neon sign inviting a mass shooting or some crazed man shooting his wife.
#2 Our states currently do not follow existing gun laws. You might be surprised to learn that only a small fraction of people barred from owning firearms gets reported to the database for background checks – including the mentally ill. Before we enact new laws we need to actually enforce the ones we already have.
#3 I support background checks to screen out the mentally ill, those with restraining orders, and other such people.
#4 The problem I, and many others, have with registering guns is that every time a new law gets passed outlawing a new firearm, they are used to seek out law abiding citizens and take away guns they lawfully purchased at the time. There is often no “grandfathering.” This the crux behind most of the push against gun registration.
Bam Bam
Here’s a good one on the kindness of Americans towards animals. But let’s attack Iran.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2080702/Horror-U-S-soldiers-blow-dog-Iraq-film-it.html
Here’s another, very important article that I think approaches the current situation with American thinking, culture and actions:
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/27/neocons-the-echo-of-german-fascism/
Intro blurb: “The “f-word” for “fascist” keeps cropping up in discussing aggressive U.S. and Israeli “exceptionalism,” but there’s a distinction from the “n-word” for “Nazi.” This new form of ignoring international law fits more with an older form of German authoritarianism favored by neocon icon Leo Strauss, says retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce.”
Scary, I find that American culture truly does reflect that which is noted from Nazi Germany as stated in the article. I pray, hope, wish we change our ways before we reach WW3 or have ourselves schooled by creditors who don’t wish to be treated by the U.S. govt or dark govt they way they have been. In any case, our national trajectory is unsustainable and leading to a very bad place.
But you see evidence of this thinking every time you see, for instance, a Sunday morning political show. Everywhere on Western media we see pundits and politicians and lobbyists and special interests talking openly about the U.S. Govt effecting regime change or sanctions or drones or bombings/airstrikes or boots on the ground. The arrogance! And the utter lack of respect for international law, for national sovereignty, for the rights of non-Americans to exist. We Americans are so lost. Bad leaders around the globe make it super hard on all humans and non-humans alike.
Good for Ali Karimi! 🙂
Isaac:
“More people have been killed in the past year with guns/violence than in the entire 20th Century in GB.”
The US is a far more vast country than Great Britain. It’s not the total number of homicides but the percentages that compare apples to apples. Did you follow the scandal a few years ago where it was reported that England only reported SOLVED, prosecuted, and sentenced homicides in their murder statistics?
If you want to know what disarming the population does to violent crime, delve more deeply into the statistics of the UK. I was very interested in this subject, and looked into it.
I might have a different opinion of gun ownership if, say, I lived in a gang infested neighborhood or in the other extreme in one of those really safe Small Town Americas where everyone leaves their front door open and cars unlocked. No, strike that. If I lived in a high crime neighborhood with a high rate of break-ins I would want to be armed. I’ve been robbed before when I was home, many years ago, and would not want to repeat that experience.
Among my extended family, we have hunters who almost never buy meat from the grocery store, and we have members who are physically uncomfortable even talking about firearms. Each has the right to own a firearm, or to not permit one to cross their threshold. I respect their opinions, and I respect yours. My only problem with the anti-gun crowd is when they want to force their opinions on me.
fnn
Thank you for bringing this our because inhumanity knows no bounds and animals love in a way that Christ tried to exemplify as humans spit on him on his way to calvary
Why does Po have such a problem whenever atrocities committed in the name of Islam (like the attempt to criminalize dog ownership under Sharia Law) makes it to the news?
It’s strange, because I didn’t get defensive when the Catholic pedophile priest scandal broke. I joined my voice with others to call for reform and the arrest of everyone involved. He keeps denying the plight of women under Sharia Law, denying the unending news stories of violent extremist Islam, having a problem even with this story about torturing poor dogs to death.
It’s unfortunate, because moderate Muslims could be a real force for change against radical Islam. But a review of the past few months shows a pattern to his contributions every time these kinds of stories hit with unhappy frequency.
“Nothing to see here. Please move along.”
Bam Bam at 6:16
To para-phrase Jerry Lee Lewis, there’s a whole lotta smitin’ going on (as in smite, to kill) in the bible. Get real. Give us some figures on the number of people killed in the past decade or two by Christians (especially, unfortunately, Americans) versus those killed by Muslims. Bet it’s something like millions to thousands.
*paste
bam bam
you are neither the first nor will you be the last to copy and past from islamophobic websites. Whatever you are offering, we have seen previously. The funny thing is that islamophobes now seem to know more about islam than Muslims do, most muslims have no idea what takkiya or ktman are, for they play no role in their lives. The Quran and Prophet say that lying is evil, and that one is bound to testify against oneself. There is no freedom from self-incrimination in Islam.
And Shuler is right, the same propaganda that led to the Iraq invasion is at play here against Iran.
And how can you blame Iran for calling death to America and Israel when America and Israel are working actively to attack Iran?
Hypocrisy some?
Bam Bam
Here’s just one pretty generic entry on the babies and incubators thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_(testimony)
Non-human animals never get closure. They are expendable. They don’t speak any human tongue, though they constantly read us humans and learn our language. Humans take advantage that they can’t speak and complain. Thus the horrific treatment non-human animals suffer at the hands of human animals that live our lives pretending that we’re not really animals, but we are. If we had to see other animals as thinking, feeling beings, that might upset commerce, so that very profound impulse will continue to be defied.
Will look for something on that poor white puppy, something that scarred me. It was 25 years ago or so and I’ll never forget, for the sake of that beautiful innocent, thinking, feeling being that died for a**hole humans and their evil stuff.
I like dogs and most animals. The interesting thing about dogs is that they represent the treatment they get from their owners. We have *ssh*le neighbors who leave their dogs, two matched pairs, alone all day long. The dogs bark that ‘need attention’ bark most of the day. For the *hole owners this is OK. So, they love their dogs. They are negligent *holes that have the dogs cuz it makes them feel ‘something’.
It sort of reminds me of the Koch brothers and their poodle, the governor of Wisconsin. It’s not really Walkers’s fault. He’s just a mutt. The problem is with his owners.
I suppose that stories of Saddam ordering the throwing of enemies into a wood chipper, while still alive, are also lies. Where is your source of information, which declares both of those actions, which you state, to be fabrications? I would like to read it. Never heard that those events were fabricated. I’ve read far more gruesome tales pertaining to the former members of Saddam’s army. For what it’s worth, I once read that Saddam, as a young boy, used to like to torture and kill small animals. Have no idea as to where I read that information. It’s usually a very bad sign in children, and has some correlation to a sociopathic personality.
Though I appreciate these issues getting public attention, don’t you find it suspicious this info came out at a time when u.s. war-mongers are attacking nuclear talks with Iran? Reminds me of the white puppy videotaped being poisoned supposedly by the Iraqi’s and the babies and incubators story from Kuwait, found afterward to be war-mongering lies. Important subject that needs attention, but don’t let yourself be used toward bad ends, Mr Turley.
Unfortunately, beatings, torture, killings, and other acts of barbarism are common in the Muslim culture. Many Islamist have a completely different mindset than most westerners. However, we’ve seen cruelty to humans and animals in this country too.
We humans need mercy for our many sins.
Yawn.
Who says people who torture dogs shouldn’t be condemned? Straw man.
Edward
The pod people haven’t gotten to you yet. Run for your life! Finally, a voice of reason.
The same logic, which allows one to call others phobic, sans any real evidence, is the same one used to bash certain religions, without real justification. Note, only certain religions are bashed. One is considered the third rail, and, is therefore, untouchable, regardless of the daily reports of barbarity, worldwide.