It's too bad the Religious Policeman is no longer in action, because today's news has yet another bizarre story out of Arabia that he would have a field-day with:
Saudi Arabia's religious police have issued
a ban on the sale of dogs and cats in two cities, calling the pets a
bad Western influence. Conservative Muslims have long considered dogs
unclean, though some Arabs keep them for hunting. The cat ban was seen
as more puzzling, because Islamic tradition holds that the Prophet
Muhammad loved cats. The decree, effective in Jidda and Mecca,
complained about a trend among affluent young Saudis of owning fancy
purebred pets “and parading them in public.”
It's sad to think that civil rights campaigns in Saudi Arabia are now as basic as struggling to protect the right to own a cat.
Comments