OVO

A retriever is in training to become the first dog in Britain to be permitted to enter a mosque, acting as a guide for its blind Muslim owner. The animal has been chosen because it salivates less than usual, thus reducing the risk of flicking spittle onto other worshippers at the Al Falah

Keeping pet dogs is considered “haram” (the Arabic word for “forbidden”) in Islamic teaching, because they are regarded as unclean, particularly their saliva. The mosque took its decision after advice from imams and scholars at the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), who carried out a full review of Islamic teaching on dogs. [...] Ibrahim Mogra, a senior imam at the MCB, who has overseen the review of teaching on guide dogs, said they could be justified as they served an “urgent practical purpose”. He said: “We found the Koran allows Muslims to use dogs for hunting. So if Muslims can eat a prey bitten by dogs, then there should not be a problem using them to guide you if you are blind.”

[Article continues at link. This is an example of how religion tries to have it both ways. On the one hand, keeping dogs is haram - an eternal, unchanging, infallible, supreme, all-knowing Allah told us so! On the other hand, we can talk about it and change the rules if it suits our urgent practical purpose. It might have helped the 'revelation' along that in June a UK Muslim cab driver was fined for refusing a blind couple with a guide dog access to his cab. Just as the 'revelation' to allow Black men to lead Mormon Boy Scout troops miraculously came at around the time lawsuits against the Mormons were being filed. Or the 'revelation' that Mormon polygamy was for heaven and not Earth miraculously came at around the time Utah wanted to join the United States. It is good that theists try to have it both ways. Debating religion and making changes are both steps toward secularization, in which human reason and compassion trumps tradition. Secular humanists, like atheists, just get on with things. Religious humanists, as these Muslims are whether they want to be or not, may cloak their reason and compassion in superstitious garb. But at the end of the day they recognize themselves and not an invisible monster that lives in the sky as the true active moral agent. - Trevor Blake]