Chapter 80 of The Search for Beauty in Islam: “The Lord of the Essence: A Fatwa on Dogs”
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I replied: “As reported by a large number of sources including Ibn Rushd, the grandson, al-Dardir, and al-Sawi, a considerable number of jurists particularly, but not exclusively, from the Maliki school of thought, reasoned as follows: Everything found in nature is presumed to be pure unless proven otherwise, either through experience or text. Establishing that the all the hadith we already discussed are not of sufficient reliability or authenticity so as to overcome the presumption of purity, they argued that dogs are pure animals. Accordingly, as reported in sources such as al-Munif the author of al-Fatawa al-Khayriyya; al-Qarafi in al-Dhakhira, Ibn Nujaym in al-Bahr al-Ra’iq, Ibn Qudama in al-Mughni, Ibn Hazm in al-Muhalla, several jurists maintained that dogs do not void a Muslim’s prayer or ritual purity. In other words, that dogs and their saliva are pure. We are informed by Ibn Rushd, the grandfather, in Muqaddimat al-Mumahhidat that other jurists argued that the command mandating that a vessel be washed a number of times was intended as a precautionary health measure. These jurists argued that the Prophet’s tradition on this issue was intended to apply only to dogs at risk of being infected by the rabies virus. Hence, if a dog is not a possible carrier of rabies, it is presumed to be pure, and therefore, there is no problem with owning or coming into contact with such a dog. As mentioned by Ibn al-‘Arabi in his ‘Arida, a number of jurists, building upon this logic, reasoned that rural dogs are pure, while urban dogs are impure because urban dogs often consume garbage or trash. Another group of jurists argued that the purity of dogs turns on their domesticity—domestic dogs are considered pure because human beings feed and clean them, while dogs that live in the wild or on the streets of a city could be carriers of disease, and therefore, they are considered impure. The point is, Shaykh, that for those who adopted the rational basis approach, as long as the cleanliness of the dog could be insured, they saw no problem regarding the dog’s purity, and they also saw no problem as to the ownership of dogs.”
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