Showing gentleness to animals is not the spoiling of dogs and cats

Showing gentleness to animals as we understand from our Shari`ah means to provide their needs from food, drink, and an adequate place to protect them against heat and cold.

Moreover, we should not burden them beyond their capacity and to treat them if they got sick.

We should slaughter animals properly if they are among the eatable animals which Allah subjugated for our service.

As for other animals which live in our environment and wild animals, our religion prohibited us from locking or harming them so that they could be able to go and fetch their hunts because Allah (Glory be to Him) created them and granted them the instincts which enable them to hunt without the help of anyone. Allah (Glory be to Him) says: "And no moving (living) creature is there on earth but its provision is due from Allâh. And He knows its dwelling place and its deposit (in the uterus, grave). All is in a Clear Book (Al-Lauh-Al-Mahfûz - the Book of Decrees with Allâh)." [Surat Hud: 6].

That does not mean that we should not help them, if needed, by feeding, watering them, removing the harm from their young, and securing natural reserves for some of them to protect their species as possible. Furthermore, our religion prohibits us from killing harmful animals except in case of necessity; it even prohibits us from cursing animals as reported in the Hadith of the rooster.

Is not that a perfect law from the Creator to animals out of His Mercy and Gentleness with them that was built on a strong fundamental of reward and punishment?! Is not it a comprehensive regulation for the relationship between man and animal which excels all laws laid by the societies of animals' rights?!

To prove our kindness to animals, we do not need to imitate others and make some of these animals such as dogs and cats live in our houses as a family member, sleep on our couches, mess up with our furniture, and they may sit on our dining tables and take them to animals' shops so as to take shower, do a hair style, and wear human clothes.

Moreover, we make them participate in competitions and parades and leave a will for them with our money after death.

They were not created to live luxuriously in places other than their suitable environment, and not to spend money on them without justification, whereas humans around us cannot find any of all these! It is enough to stop harming them and let them live peacefully.

If they wish to mess up with the natures of things to please their animals, that is their problem.

Whoever of us wants to follow their steps, this is their problem too, but they should stop lecturing us about how to treat animals kindly, particularly after reminding them that their kindness to their pets we do not see when they deal with other animals when slaughtering or getting rid of them.

They resort to methods that are not recognized by our Shari`ah by hitting their heads with metals and electrocuting them and even throwing them alive in the chipping and the chopping machines.

Our Islam do not permit us to force animals to fight one another as roosters' fight which ends up to the death of one of them; no use of that but having fun and bets against the favor of these animals!

Islam prohibits us from torturing animals to the extent that they go wild due to their excessive pain as they do in Rodeo sport in the American West or torturing them by stabbing with spikes in their bodies as a prelude to kill them brutally as in Spanish bullfighting.

Their conditions are similar to the conditions of hunters in the African jungles who kill their hunts savagely. Sometimes they take off the horns of animals and their precious canines while being alive, leaving them to suffer pain and slow death.

Torturing animals in some countries of the Far-East reaches its peak by skinning them alive, and one of their luxurious meals is to eat a raw brain of a monkey while being alive after breaking its head and taking it off directly to the dining table in a very horrid scene.

What kind of people are those which mercy and kindness were taken out of their hearts, and what a doctrine they adopt?! Is not there a contradiction in their dealings with animals: sometimes they treat them extremely kindly and other times they enjoy torturing them? Have their societies for protecting animals succeeded in stopping these ugly practices?! A true Muslim does not need a man-made-law to prevent him of committing that manifest oppression against these poor animals; thanks to Allah for our religion.

It is useful to remind those, who follow the steps of the West, of a news came in the media that an Australian man announced his marriage to his she-dog and invited his family and friends for the occasion; how could we describe such an action?!

By Allah, hearings are troubled by hearing this news. A person of a sound mind wonders: What is this kindness which violates the natural disposition of man and animal equally?

Perhaps if this she-dog had possessed some human qualities, it would have uttered and refused that groom and asked for a he-dog instead or would have chosen to live as a widow ever after.

O Allah, protect for us our religion, mind, and natural disposition, and grant us strength to avoid aberration and deviation.