Dogs and dog owners are the latest target for the morality maniacs in Iran. The police have set up a “dog prison” in Tehran and are snatching dogs from owners who are walking their pets in public, detaining the dogs and then releasing them on bail. The charges against said mutts? Walking in public, apparently.

It seems that the head of Tehran’s security forces has declared that it is against the law to walk one’s dog in public. For the hard line clerics dogs are unclean in Islamic law and it is unislamic to own a dog, although others have pointed out that there are no passages in the Qur’an about dogs being dirty. Furthermore, it seems that those who own dogs have fallen prey to Western decadence and immorality.

The detained dogs are taken to a newly created doggy detention centre where, according to Iranian animal welfare advocates, they are kept in unsuitable and often cramped conditions amidst piles of garbage.

There’s a Baha’i story about an Islamic scholar who took his horse to a blacksmith who happened to be a Baha’i. The blacksmith was not an educated man, but he did have an understanding of logic. “Sir,” he said to the scholar, “is it not true that there’s an Islamic tradition that says that every drop of rain is carried down by an angel.”

“It is true,” said the scholar.

“And,” continued the blacksmith as he bent over and applied the new shoe to the horse’s hoof, “is it not also true that there’s a tradition that says that no angel will visit a house where there’s a dog.”

“It is true,” said the scholar, admiring the uneducated blacksmith’s knowledge of the hadith, but not seeing the logical pit he was about to fall into.

“In that case,” said the blacksmith as he straightened up after hammering in the final nail, “doesn’t that mean it could never rain on a house where there’s a dog?”

“Ah,” said the scholar, and became a Baha’i.

Read more about the barking madness in Tehran here.

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