By Abdul Masih —
According to Sahih Muslim 2104, a puppy is the reason angel Gabriel blew his appointment with Prophet Mohammad. “It was the dog in your house that prevented me,” Gabriel told him later. “We do not enter a house that contains a dog.”
Hence the origin of Islamic aversion for dogs. “Whoever keeps a dog… each day out of his own good deeds Allah will erase and deduct the weight of Mount Uhud (a mountain near Jeddah) of good deeds,” warns Assim al‑Hakeem, a Saudi cleric in Jeddah.
While there are moderate traditions that view dogs benignly in Islam, a major swath of scholars declare dogs to be unclean and keeping them as a pets a sin: Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz, Muhammad ibn al-Uthaymeen, Saleh al-Fawzan, Zakir Naik, Bilal Philips, Taqi Usmani and Darul Uloom Deoband, for example.
As a result, the Muslim world is rife with incidents that outrage dog lovers: Morocco is killing 3M stray dogs ahead of the World Cup, an Uber drive refused a blind man and his guide dog in Leicester in 2016, an event designed to get people to overcome their fear of dogs by petting them in Malaysia generated a huge religious backlash.
Leaflets and signs have shown up in Muslim-dominate neighborhoods telling people to NOT walk their dogs because they’re offensive to Muslims. The Camden Council in England was considering banning dogs in parks (or parts of parks) out of respect for Muslims.
There are TikTok and X videos where Muslims complain about dogs in the West and ones where trolls deliberately walk their dogs through Muslim neighborhoods.
But aside from the hadiths that blast dogs, would it be inappropriate to ask what Mohammad had against the furry friends?
Historian Raymond Ibrahim, who is always well-sourced, offers a radioactive conjecture:
“Could it be that the angel was afraid the dog would start barking if he approached the house as dogs are want to do and therefore cause a scene waking neighbors up at such an ungodly hour?” Ibrahim asks. “Maybe if Gabriel wasn’t Gabriel.”
Dihyah ibn Khalifah al-Kalbi was a close companion of the prophet renowned in the hadiths for his striking beauty.
Often when he was to make a nightly rendezvous with Mohammad to give revelations, the angel Gabriel “took the form” of Dihyah (Sahih Muslim — Hadith 2459 (also cited as 177 in some editions); Jamiʿ at-Tirmidhi — Hadith 3278; Sahih al-Bukhari — Hadith 3634 (virtues of companions section; others).
Hmmmmm.
Why would Gabriel impersonate Dihyah (Sahih al‑Bukhari 4980)? Or was it Dihyah himself and Mohammad needed an alibi for his late night rendezvous? A dog barking at a late night intruder could disrupt alert the entire neighborhood, of which maybe not everyone would believe Dihyah was Gabriel.
“They came up with a plan. If anyone saw them together, Dihyah would pretend to be Gabriel on the notion that the apparently vain angel was desirous of taking on the handsome man’s guise whenever manifesting in the flesh to meet with Muhammad,” Ibrahim says. “Rather convenient excuse whenever Muhammad’s wives saw Dihyah with the prophet late at night in their homes.”
This version of history is fraught with slander, but ex-Muslims around the world affirm that it makes more sense, Ibrahim says.
Dogs would wake neighbors and alert them to the meetup. So Mohammad ordered his followers to kill all the dogs in Medina. Sahih Muslim 1572: “Allah’s Messenger ordered us to kill dogs, and we carried out this order so much so that we also kill the dog coming with a woman from the desert.”
Of course, if you believe the hadiths are valid, you will find Ibrahim’s theory blasphemous.
Islam Q&A says: “We must ensure that Muslims continue to be averse to dogs, even in the midst of what the non-Muslims are used to doing, and what some Muslims have adopted of their habits. And Allah knows best.”
