Islam’s Cruelty Toward Animals

When someone within Islam talks about love for animals and nature, assume it is mere posturing

Whenever there is a festival in the country or the world, Islamic religious scholars start burning inside, because in Islam the celebration of human joy and festivals is forbidden. Nothing in Islam happens without solemnity. People like Ahmadullah say that fireworks during the English New Year kill animals or harm the environment, or cause waste. Do they think they are great lovers of animals, birds, and nature? In reality, the Islamic prohibition on participating in non-Muslim festivals is simply being presented under the modern excuse of environmental awareness instead of stating it directly.

Although the Western world consumes a large amount of meat every day, there is no festival there where, like Muslims, millions of animals are slaughtered publicly on a specific day (Eid-ul-Adha), flooding the streets with blood and filth, and encouraging unnecessary overconsumption of meat in a single day.

Because of various Islamic rules and restrictions, it cannot be called a fully animal-loving religion, especially in the case of dogs, where its attitude is extremely harsh. According to Sahih Bukhari Hadith 5480, keeping a dog at home without the purpose of hunting or guarding causes a person’s record of good deeds to decrease by a large amount every day. Additionally, according to Islamic belief, angels of mercy do not enter a house where a dog is present, and black dogs are directly labeled as “devils” and ordered to be killed.

Along with dogs, Islam’s attitude toward several other specific animals is also quite negative and aggressive. According to hadith instructions, killing lizards, geckos, snakes, and scorpions upon sight brings spiritual reward. Islam instructs the killing of these animals based purely on mythical stories, and these instructions are still considered valid. Some narrations even describe certain animals as evil or associated with Satan in unscientific ways, such as pigeons. The most objectionable and controversial issue arises when religious doctrine compares animals to women. According to hadith, if a black dog, a donkey, or a woman passes in front of someone praying, the prayer becomes invalid — something that feels extremely discriminatory and irrational in the modern age. In Islam, women are indirectly placed in the same category as black dogs, described as the greatest source of harm for men.

Alongside discrimination against animals and women, Islam’s militant mindset and unrealistic mythology are also questioned by the rational thinking of modern people. For example, a well-known hadith prophecy states that before the Day of Judgment, in a bloody war, stones and trees will speak and call out to Muslims saying, “O Muslim, a Jew is hiding behind me, come and kill him.” One can easily imagine how extreme the blindness and hatred must be for an inanimate stone or tree to supposedly learn human language and incite the killing of a specific group.

Yet even within this blind mythology, an odd contradiction is inserted: it is said that although all trees will speak, a special tree named “Gharqad” will not speak and will instead shelter Jews (which is why it is called the “Jewish tree”). Now tell me, with such cruelty toward animals, blaming trees, maintaining primitive hostility, spreading hatred against Jews, and promoting unscientific mythical stories — what does this prove? That they are great lovers of animals, birds, and the environment? If people in Bangladesh knew which tree was the Gharqad, they would probably cut them all down in a single day. These doctrines are not divine or universal messages of peace, but merely the products of medieval Arabian tribal conflicts.

The greatest tragedy is that a believer is required to accept all these bizarre and inhumane ideas blindly. If a Muslim does not accept these beliefs, or refuses to act according to them out of logic or humanity, they have no alternative. Because rejecting this blindness supposedly deprives them of the chance to enter the imaginary paradise of “72 houris” in the afterlife. For centuries, people have been trapped in this medieval cycle of blindness through the lure of an unrealistic heaven and the fear of hell.