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Authorities In Saudi Arabia Ban Sale of Pet Cats And Dogs

August 25th, 2006Esra'a (Bahrain)

I hoped to God that this would be satire, but it’s not. It made the front page of most papers here.

From playfuls-

Authorities in the Saudi city of Mecca have banned the sale of pet cats and dogs at the request of religious police, the Arab News reported Thursday.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice made the request after many young Saudis had gone outdoors with their pet dogs thus violating the kingdom’s culture and traditions.

Authorities in the city of Jeddah have also begun enforcing the decision, the report said.

The commission complained that Saudi youth, apparently influenced by Western culture, were bringing their pets into public places, allegedly causing distress to families with young children.

[Read more]

Tragic. Is there anything Saudi isn’t willing to ban? Seriously.

10 Responses to “Authorities In Saudi Arabia Ban Sale of Pet Cats And Dogs”

  1. I don’t understand the ban on cats. Wasn’t there a wonderful story about the Prophet Mohammad who took care of/fed cats?

    I don’t fully understand the ban on dogs either but can understand it better because of traditional thoughts that dogs are not clean. Even in Jewish tradition (Dogs were unclean flesh eaters banned from the temple (Ex 22:31)), they are unclean and Orthodox Jews in urban areas do not keep dogs as pets. Secular Jews do.

    What happens in Saudi Arabia if someone doesn’t “buy” a dog, but just “adopts” a stray one?

  2. You can probably have it as a pet just as long as it’s behind closed doors. The idea is that you’re not supposed to take it to walks or bring it with you in public areas. When it comes to Saudi, the problem with having pets is not just an issue of cleanliness. The authorities are really paranoid and they enjoy making these kinds of choices for other people.

    The ban would be understandable and reasonable if it was applied to specific places, like if you can’t bring pets along with you to cafes and restaurants. But to not be allowed to have pets at all because it’s too “Western” is unbelievable. What’s next? “You can’t breathe through your nose because Americans breathe that way too and it might destroy our culture?”

    The religious leaders in Saudi really need to be replaced. They really stop the country from moving forward.

  3. s there anything Saudi isn’t willing to ban? Seriously.

    Wahabist fanatics?

  4. Wahabist fanatics?

    Sometimes Saudi officials like to claim that they’re after them. But you can tell that recent new policies in Saudi are influenced by paranoid Wahabist ideologies. I just hope that we’ll never have those kinds of religious leaders in Bahrain.

  5. While there long ago, i heard that the religious police wanted 2 ban contact lenses at least blue and green ones, since they resembled the eye color of most infidels—-like geez, many hindus and sikhs have black and brown eye color and many muslims from afghanistan and iran have green ones—i just dont understand the rationality of those imbeciles.

  6. I read a few months ago about a young man in Iran whose puppy ran away. He did what any normal person would do: he hung signs around the neighborhood asking anyone who’d seen the dog to please call him.

    He was arrested, of course.

  7. Maybe the authorities thought that by “dog” he meant “women.” Common mistake, you see.

  8. Pretty typical from a System that decides to just BAN the source the problem, rather than fixing it..

    Islam spoke about this issue, and it’s already solved.. One of the great fellows of the Prophet PBUH, Abo Horay’ra, had a pet cat.. The name Horay’ra is actually derived from the Arabic word, Herra, which means Cat..

    I stopped trying to understand how these guys function a long time ago.. This comes to no surprise to me.. :(

  9. This ban on catz and dogs sucks!!! wish they would focus on much more important things like global warming

  10. The saudi Gov. ban sales of cats because alot of people get bored from it for some reason and let it go on the streat and they breed out there which is a huge problem here ( Saudi Arabia). However, u can still buy it from any other city.

    Dogs was always been undesirable because of religion reasons. but people still get it and now they want to ban it from every ciry so i wont start a new problems like what happened with cats.

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