Muslims Find Puppies Offensive, Instructed to Kill Them

Some days I think I could fill an entire book with odd beliefs from different religions. For example, here's something I bet you didn't know about Islam...

From the UK:

"Muslims living in UK’s Dundee area have complained over a police advertisement featuring a puppy sitting on an officer’s hat.

A police force has apologised to Islamic leaders for the “offensive” postcard advertising a new non-emergency telephone number, which shows a six-month-old trainee police dog named Rebel."

Why is a puppy offensive to Muslims?

"Traditionally, dogs have been seen as impure, and the Islamic legal tradition has developed several injunctions that warn Muslims against most contact with them.

Conservative Muslims have long-regarded dogs as unclean animals..."

Ok, unclean animals are supposedly offensive to both Muslims and Jews, which is one reason the Swine Flu was officially renamed H1N1 flu by the U.S. Centers For Disease Control (it wasn't just some religions who found the term Swine Flu offensive, the pork industry was also very interested in giving it a different name).

However, finding a puppy offensive and how Islam says to treat dogs is entirely different. From the UK article:

"According to one Hadith, a traditional story of the Prophet, Muhammad said a Muslim loses credit for one good deed each day he keeps a dog, and even said they should be killed unless used for hunting or protection."

Killed? I'm not picking on Islam, because every religion is full of nonsense, but any one that instructs you to kill innocent animals because you find them offensive is crazy.

So I did some research, hoping to find some clarification. An Islamic website called Muttaqun.com has an entire section on dogs in Islam and the Hadith.

(Hadith are instructions and sayings attributed to Muhammad that are not in the Quran. There are thousands of Hadith, all from different followers of Muhammad, and while many of them were compiled a century or more after The Prophet's death, they are used today in Islamic Law, so they're aren't just fringe or supplementary teachings. Learn more about Haddith here).

Most of the dog Hadith's point back to the angel Gabriel not entering Muhammad's house to visit him because a dog was hiding in the house, which Muhammad either did not know about or didn't remember. When Muhammad kicked the dog out of the house, Gabriel quickly arrived and said, "It was the dog in your house which prevented me (to come), for we (angels) do not enter a house in which there is a dog or a picture."

Angels are afraid of dogs? Or do Angels think dogs are unclean? Either way, it's weird, but what's more troubling is Muhammad's response to his followers the next day:

"So the very next morning he commanded the dogs to be killed. He announced that the dog kept for the orchards should also be killed, but he spared the dog used for the protection of extensive fields (or big gardens)."

Another Hadith says Muhammad ordered the killing of every pure black dog, "the black dog is a devil."

Muhammad clearly had a problem with dogs. Even cute little black puppies.