And now it’s dogs:
Pet owners in Iran are aghast at an unprecedented move by Iranian police to create “prisons” for dogs whose masters flout a ban on walking them in public.
The Iranian blogosphere is abuzz with details, as well as photographs, purportedly taken in the Islamic Republic, of dogs penned in cramped cages.
“One day it’s dogs, tomorrow they have to catch birds. The police themselves must be laughing at us,” a woman, identified only as Najda, told Radio Farda, a Farsi language radio station supported by the US government. Her sick dog was “arrested” as she was bringing it home from a vet where it had surgery. All detained dogs are taken to a newly created detention centre, the station reported.
Another young woman complained her puppy was detained for 48 hours for “walking in public” and was then released on bail.
Dogs are generally considered unclean in Islamic law, although the authorities have made exceptions for specially trained dogs to detect drugs or earthquake victims.
But keeping canines as pets is on the rise, especially among rich Iranians in westernised north Tehran. Iranian police warned people not to bring out their dogs in public last year, but the order was never backed up and widely flouted.
Now it is being enforced as part of a sweeping crackdown on “un-Islamic behaviour”, aimed at curbing “Westoxification” – the supposedly corrupting influence of western popular culture…
Keeping dogs as pets is seen by hardliners as a western affectation and denounced as “morally depraved”. One ayatollah in the holy city of Qom denounced “short-legged dogs” in particular a few years ago.
Dog owners keep a low profile, walking their pets after dark or driving them to the mountains for exercise away from the police or basijis, the Islamic volunteer force that monitors public modesty.
Mick Hartley 
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