Why not? Because the Holy Quran says you are permitted to… How do you say? Hunting with dogs? Is there a particular term used in English for this? Game, hunting with dogs. It’s permitted in the Holy Quran, you know. So I’m asking anyone who knows, is there a particular term in English used for this? Catching birds or things with birds. No, no, but there are two different things. The dogs here which are used for hunting, they are just assistants to retrieve the birds which are killed, not by dogs themselves, but by guns and things. Except perhaps I think rabbits are caught by dogs. But anyway, it is permitted in Islam.
So if it is permitted, why shouldn’t you keep dogs? How can you train them and how can you use them for hunting game while you are not keeping them? What is bothering you is another tradition which says, if it is correct, it says that Angela Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam discouraged people having dogs in their houses and said wherever there are dogs in the houses, the angels do not visit. Now this tradition cannot be translated in any manner as to contradict the clear injunctions of the Holy Quran. So obviously people have misunderstood the meaning and significance of this instruction. The fact is that if the dogs are not trained and if they are let loose in the houses, all the gentle people, all the gentlemanly people would think not only twice, but many times before visiting that house.
Because nobody wants to be bitten by dogs or chased by dogs. Now this is something which is completely alien to the western society of today. Nowadays in most of the western countries, dogs are so well trained and there are legal, I mean there are certain legal responsibilities of the owner of the dog. That if a dog bites some visitor or someone, he has to pay the damages which may amount to even 100,000 more in America for instance. So it is very rare you would find any dog biting here in these countries. So these people cannot understand this tradition because they don’t know the atmosphere of the east. We know that most dogs as kept in our country or other countries are more likely to bite the visitors than not.
So people cease to visit such places. I know some houses myself where I don’t pay any visit or have not been paying visits and when they reproached me for this, I said first you bind your dog or make him behave otherwise I can’t come. I am not fond of being bitten by dogs or chased by them. So that is what it means, number one. That where unruly dogs are kept, purposelessly, or violent dogs, ferocious dogs, here angels don’t visit and by angels here is meant angelic people. Secondly, according to some scholars this could have been used not in literal terms but in spiritual terms. Dogs spiritually. Because the holy Quran also mentions dog as an example and mentions that some people are like dogs. For instance where Balambaur is mentioned in the holy Quran, the example of a dog is given and he is painted as one like a dog. That is the reason why that dog is mentioned when Balambaur is mentioned.
So that shows that some people are like dogs. And they are injurious to peace, they are a hazard to peace. And wherever, in whichever houses such people are found, angels won’t visit. Angels in both senses here. The angels in the form of human beings as well as the angels in the forms of those messengers that he uses to send his word to man. So such houses are obviously out of bounds for angels where dogs are kept in these two respects. Either the real dogs which are not trained and properly trained or the human dogs. Either way the angels won’t visit that house. But it is impossible to translate this tradition in any way where it contradicts the holy Quran as I have mentioned. When the holy Quran permits you to keep dogs and to train them and to go game hunting with them, how can the tradition of the holy prophet reject that clear injunction of the holy Quran?
