Don't touch dogs

Religious prohibitions are often strange, at least to me.  For example, Amish don’t like buttons because they were considered fancy when that religion was founded.  Today, of course, hooks and eyes are weird and buttons are the norm, but the old prohibition stands.

Jews don’t eat pork; at one time this made sense given trichinosis problems, but we now know that proper meat preparation can eliminate that threat.  There are still good reasons not to eat pork (gestation pens, energy consumption), but a 4000+ year-old prohibition seems rather lame.

Now I learn that Muslims in Malysia aren’t supposed to pet dogs.  After hundreds of people showed up in an event in Malaysia entitled “I Want To Touch a Dog,” the organizer, Mr. Syed Azmi Alhabshi, may be in big trouble with the Malaysia’s Muslim leaders.  He has received a number of messages on his phone threatening physical harm.  Malaysian Muslim leaders consider dogs unclean.  

His problems began when pictures appeared on the Internet showing Muslim women in head scarves hugging dogs.  

The information on dog-hugging is from an article in the Oct. 27 issue of the Times by Thomas Fuller.  The article did not say anything about Hindus and cows or Catholics and gays.