On Aug. 25, 2023, a video appeared of Muslim girls covered from head to toe in all black burqas, dancing to a song that praised Islam and cursed "infidels" — that is, all non-Muslims.  The video — which would make ISIS proud and chill Western audiences — was taken on a woman's college campus in India, Talimuddin Niswan Women's Degree College in Mau.

Swati Goel Sharma, the journalist who shared the video, wrote:

A glimpse into the brainwashing and radicalisation that goes on in religious minority institutes [meaning Muslim schools in India].  Women covered from head to toe in burqa are glorifying the regressive all-body wrapping as the very foundation of their religious beliefs, while cursing non-believers as hijdas [eunuchs] and kutta [dogs] and declaring them as enemies.

Indoctrinating Muslim students to hate and despise non-Muslims is nothing new and par for the course all throughout the Muslim world.

Of interest here is the disparaging reference to dogs, not least as it underscores the vast cultural differences between the West and Islam.  Put differently, whereas dogs are seen as "man's best friend" in the West — indeed, not a few so-called "progressives" are even trying to transform themselves into dogs — for many Muslims, dogs are vermin.  Indeed, as discussed in this article from less than a year ago, dogs are regularly targeted for cruel treatment and extermination in the Muslim world.

Where does this hate come from?  As usual, the prophet of Islam: Muhammad.  According to Abdullah bin Omar, as recorded in the canonical (or sahih) hadith collection of Al-Muslim, "The Messenger of Allah used to order the killing of dogs, so we used to send [men] to Medina and its adjoining vicinity, and we spared no dog but rather killed it."  (Translation of Arabic text.)

Muhammad later revised his decision by allowing dogs that earn their keep — by herding, hunting, or guarding — to exist unmolested, though the hate for them remained: angels, the prophet of Allah warned, would never visit and therefore bless homes that keep dogs.

In short, and as one anti-dog fatwa, or Islamic decree, concludes:

We must ensure that Muslims continue to be averse to dogs, even in the midst of what the kuffaar [Western infidels] are used to do[ing] and what some Muslims have adopted of their habits.

Perhaps the fatwa author was thinking about Khaled Abou el-Fadl, a professor at UCLA who, being a dog lover, appears to have "adopted of their [Western] habits."

Here is a video of another Muslim sheikh on whether Muslims are permitted to keep dogs as pets (short answer: no, and hell is the price).

This discussion on dogs cannot end without reference to Islam's teaching — sung and danced to by those pleasant young girls in India — that non-Muslims are dogs.

According to sharia, the life — or as articulated in Arabic, the "blood" — of a non-Muslim is far inferior to the life/blood of a Muslim.  Rather, and based on some of Islam's respected hadith collections, the blood of a non-Muslim is equal to the blood of a dog.

According to a hadith recorded among other places in Sunan Ahmed (Hanbali jurisprudence) and Sunan al-Bayhaqi (Shafi'i jurisprudence), during the course of a discussion about non-Muslims, Caliph Omar al-Khattab — one of Sunni Islam's "four righteous caliphs" — declared, "They are mushrikun, and the blood of one of them is [like] the blood of a dog."

Mushrikun literally means those who associate others — Jesus, the Trinity, the Hindu pantheon, etc. — with Allah.  Today, it is often used to refer to any non-Muslim.

Therefore, based on this reading, non-Muslims are, like dogs, also good for nothing but killing. 

As illuminating as this excursus might be, it is also a bit redundant: Islam — the Koran itself (e.g., 9:5) — already makes clear that the life of a non-Muslim, non-dhimmi is de facto forfeit:

Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them [captive], and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar  is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Image: birgl via Pixabay, Pixabay License.