Dogs as Pets

Rasul Allah (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said, "Whoever keeps a (pet) dog which is neither a watch dog nor a hunting dog, will get a daily deduction of two Qirat from his good deeds." [Sahih Bukhari]

Do we have so many good deeds that we can afford to waste two mountains of good deeds a day? What is the need to keep a dog as a pet? This was never the custom of Muslims.

We call ourselves Muslims but have become so estranged from Islam that we are no longer aware of the well-known things that are reducing our chances of getting into Jannah. It is our attempt to resemble the Kuffar that has us mimic their tastes and their likes and dislikes. Were our belief in the Hereafter firmer we would try much harder to find out what Allah (subhana wa ta'ala) likes, what the person He loved the most (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) liked, and try to follow in his (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam's) footsteps.

What used to happen in olden times is that when nations went to war, the defeated nation would begin to voluntarily worship the gods of the victorious nation. So the moon worshippers would start worshipping the sun if they were overcome by a people who worshipped the sun. They believed that the other god must be more powerful, as a result of which the people who worshipped it had been granted victory.

While Muslims know that there is One God, Allah, they are confused about His attributes. Perhaps they feel that the non-Muslims have for the past century had the upper hand over them, colonizing them, because they have practices that are more successful. However, exchanging Allah’s commands for what He dislikes and imitating the Kuffar can never bring any good to us. It is what brought us down in the first place! It is only Allah who is the ultimate source of victory, whether temporary (in this world), or everlasting (in Jannah). Do we not believe that?